Meant "seen as faithful and obedient or given worse choices". Getting reassigned somewhere even worse, say; the salt mines at alt-Shark Bay is a particularly popular one. Or being volunteered for one-time participation in traditional Atjuntja religious ceremonies.
Lands of Red and Gold
- Thread starter Jared
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Wow, sounds fun XD Thanks for the clarification though!
Lands of Red and Gold #23: The City Between The Waters
Lands of Red and Gold #23: The City Between The Waters
"She is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold."
- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act II, Scene IV
--
Excerpts from "My Life in the South-Land". Written by Pieter Stins, a sailor who served in de Houtman's first and second voyages to what would come to be called Aururia.
Our ships sailed into the harbour of Witte Stad [1] on 26 July. Even before we came ashore, we knew we had reached a city like no other in the South-Land. Buildings covered the shore, some in a large city in the main harbour, and a smaller quarter across the water. Neither quarter had walls, and even from a distance it seemed as if everything had been built on a colossal scale.
There were docks aplenty; unlike the smaller cities, Witte Stad had boats in abundance. A few boats moved in the harbour, most of them small vessels like those of the other cities. One was larger and completely strange; twin hulls, lateen rigged, steered with a rudder rather than steering oar. One of our translators said that this was an Islander ship, from some subject people who live in the east and who sail west to trade and to honour the native emperor.
The city officials had known we were coming. They declared that only Captain-General de Houtman and thirteen other men could come ashore into the main city at any one time. The rest would have to stay at the foreign quarter across the water.
The Captain-General did not trust them, and had our ships stay well out to sea in the main harbour. The natives were meticulous in watching and counting who came and went; throughout our time there, we would only ever have fourteen men ashore at any one time. I was fortunate enough to be among the thirteen whom the Captain-General chose to accompany him into Witte Stad...
My memories of Witte Stad are confused in their order and their sense. Throughout my time there, especially the first few days, it felt as if I were walking through a dream. This is a city like no other, the jewel of the Orient, a place of mystery, splendour and horror combined. Here, the native emperor has gathered everything important in his realm into one place; gold, stone, gardens, animals, men, and heathen gods.
Everything in the city has been built to be larger than life. A man cannot walk down any street without being dwarfed by statues, whether of men or idols, looming over him wherever he walks. It is crowded, thronging with men from all quarters of this realm. I know not the numbers, but there must be tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. More men and women dwell here in any city of the Netherlands, or any European city I have seen. Some cities of the Orient may be larger, but none that I have seen or heard of have been built on this scale designed to make men feel like mice [2].
Two sounds I always remember from my time in Witte Stad. One is the noises of construction and maintenance. Seldom can a man walk far in this city without witnessing the toils of those who serve their emperor. Men labour to move materials, to shape and repair statues, to smooth and maintain the roads, to build in wood and stone, to clean and polish buildings [3]. When their work itself is silent, then the natives provide their own noise, chanting and singing as they labour. I could not decide whether the music is because they are joyful to work or to take their minds from their endless labour.
Another sound I will never forget is the endless sound of water. It is not as loud as the toils of labour, but it is always present. Rare is it indeed to find a place in the city where a man cannot hear the sound of water, whether flowing, cascading, bubbling from fountains, or dripping from the mouths of statues.
The natives adore the sound of water, and devote much of their labour to ensuring that it can always be heard. Fountains are numerous throughout the city. Sometimes water spouts from elaborately carved statues, sometimes it cascades over rocks in melodies which the natives find pleasing, and often it fills basins where a man can drink his fill whenever he chooses.
Nowhere do the natives use water more lavishly than the place they call the Thousand-fold Garden [4]. This is a veritable wonder of nature, of carefully shaped stones and plants. An endless array of trees and shrubs, a maze of flowers and beauty, trod by ducks with feathers of a thousand hues. Amidst the Garden is always the sound of water; cascading over rocks, flowing down falls, or bubbling from artfully arranged fountains that mimic the natural world...
When I first witnessed the Garden, I thought that the natives must have heard of Eden as God made it in the beginning, and that they had done their best to create a replacement for it in this fallen world. Alas, I soon learned how mistaken I was in this regard.
The natives' beliefs are a corruption of Christianity. They refer to the Lord, but believe that they must make endless sacrifices. They know not that Christ died for all our sins, and kill men or shed their blood slowly in the name of pain. I will not commit to paper a full report of the bloodthirsty abominations they commit in the name of their perverted gospel. Theirs is a heathen religion of torture, the twisted worship of a false Christ, a malformed degradation of all that is good and holy...
The natives of Witte Stad are divided into two peoples. The people who call themselves the Atjuntja are the rulers; not all the people of this stock are considered noble, but they all think of themselves as better than their subjects. In skin and in features, there is naught to distinguish an Atjuntja from their subjects, but all of their men wear full beards, and they do not permit the same to their subjects. Most all of the Atjuntja have black hair.
Their subjects go by a variety of names; the one most common I heard was Yaora, but sometimes they call themselves Yuduwungu and Madujal [5]. Most of these Yaora have blonde or light hair, though their skins are much darker. With some of the Yaora men, their hair is darker, especially those who have grown older, but not yet old enough for their hair to turn gray or white. The men among them do not all shave, but those who have beards keep them trimmed short. Our native interpreters told me that among the Atjuntja, light hair is considered a sign of common blood, although the other Yaora do not care about it in the same way...
While Witte Stad is unlike the smaller towns and cities of the South-Land in many ways, it seems to me that most of all it is designed to be a spectacle. In its construction, its waters, and its streets, it is shaped to ensure that all who visit here know that this is the residence of their emperor.
It is kept that way by most careful arrangement. For these Atjuntja do not even allow animals to wander free and disturb the streets. While these people know nothing of sheep, horses or pigs, they have nooroons [emus], dogs and ducks, but they do not allow them to roam the streets, except for the multi-hued ducks in the Garden. They even keep out the pole-cats [quolls] that they use to hunt vermin. Perhaps animals are kept away because they are so fastidious about keeping their streets clean; I do not know. But I do know that this city is a place of wonder.
--
July-August 1620
Witte Stad / Milgawee [White City]
D'Edels Land / Tiayal [western coast of Australia]
A cool breeze swept across North Water into the Foreign Quarter. Standing on the shore, looking west to the twin peaks at the heart of the greatest Ajuntja city, Yuma thought that the wind was most appropriate. It brought the tangy aroma of salt water, diluted slightly by fragrances of eucalypts and shrubs, a silent reminder that these Atjuntja worshipped nature instead of understanding it. Still, more important than the smell, the wind blew from the direction of the three strange ships that waited silently in the other harbour, West Water.
Yuma, third-most senior trading captain of the Tjula bloodline, was not usually a man given to indecision. Few Nangu trading captains were. In a world where the greatest profit went to the boldest, a captain who hesitated would be lucky if his bloodline elders did not strip him of his command or find his crew deserting for captains who earned greater wealth and glory.
Now, though, he had found himself watching for two days, and he had still come no closer to a decision. He was the captain of the last Nangu great-ship of the winter's trading fleet to remain in Milgawee. The rest had departed over the last two weeks. Those with better captains carried cargoes of sandalwood, spices, gold and fragrant oils; those with weaker captains bore mostly iron, silver, or dyes.
Yuma himself had brought his ship, the Restless, to these western lands with a cargo of kunduri, Tjibarr jewellery, and gum cider. He had carefully negotiated a series of exchanges of most of this cargo for sandalwood and gold. He could have finished his trading a week ago, but had held on to the rest of his loading of kunduri to see if he could bargain for a better deal once the Atjuntja realised that the other ships were gone and that no more kunduri could be had until the next trading fleet arrived months later.
Thanks to that delay, and perhaps the guidance of the sixth path, he had been the first Nangu captain to glimpse these strange ships enter the harbour. Ships larger than even the finest Nangu great-ship. Perhaps not as manoeuvrable, but an intimidating sight nonetheless. He had known instantly that these were foreigners; the pitiful Atjuntja knowledge of shipbuilding would not allow them to build anything remotely approaching the quality of these ships.
Word from across the water at the main quarter of Milgawee brought endless rumours of the strangers who used these ships. Raw-skinned men from beyond the world, as the Atjuntja understood it. Men with strange skills and crafts, none more awe-inspiring than that they could bind thunderbolts and use them as weapons. Men who had visited the western coast the previous year and killed Atjuntja soldiers, but who had returned speaking of peace. Apparently the commander of these raw-skinned men had been admitted to the Palace of a Thousand Rooms to meet with the King of Kings.
Yuma doubted that last part of the rumours, at least. The myriad complexities of Atjuntja protocol would not allow the King of Kings to meet with any stranger so easily. Not that it would matter; the Atjuntja conducted such negotiations through intermediaries anyway.
Still, no matter what the Atjuntja babbled about, he knew that these strangers must be men like any other. No-one had ever heard of any western islands worth visiting before, and the King of Kings' edict against western exploration meant that few Nangu had tried to find such islands. But it was only sensible that such lands existed. After all, if the Maori came from Aotearoa beyond the sunrise, why should there not be other islands beyond the sunset?
Which left Yuma in an odd position. He was, for now, the only Nangu trading captain to know about these strange ships from beyond the west. A few Nangu lived here permanently, but they were of no consequence for his purposes. No-one else back on the Island would hear word of these strangers for months unless he carried it.
So he had to decide whether to approach them, and how to find out what he could. If these raw-skins were wealthy, trade with them could prove to be very valuable. Unfortunately, there was another problem. The bearded Atjuntja buffoons were always wary of any Nangu captains who sailed further west; they preferred trade to flow through their home ports. They would be very suspicious of anything which they saw as an attempt to bypass them.
Then he had to consider these strangers themselves. They had been told that they could dock in the Foreign Quarter, if they wished, but they had chosen to keep their ships well out in the harbour. These actions spoke of a people who were full of suspicion. Any surreptitious attempts to sail to those ships would be more likely to bring an attack than a conversation. And the few strangers who went ashore to the main quarter of the city were being closely watched, he was sure. It would be difficult to speak to them without the Atjuntja finding out.
As he stared across the water, Yuma decided that for now, it would not be worth his while trying to contact these raw-skinned strangers. They were only three ships in one visit; they would not have that much worth trading for directly. Better to finish his own trading for now and sail back to the Island.
Once back home, he could consider other ways to take advantage of this new discovery. Perhaps take a great-ship further west into the sunset, to see if he could find these stranger's home islands. Or he could bring a more carefully-chosen cargo next time, with more samples of many goods, to find out what these raw-skinned strangers wanted to trade for.
For now, though, he decided these strangers should be left alone.
--
Lerunna Mundi, chamberlain of the palace, most favoured servant of the Petal Throne [6], reached for the kunduri pouch at his waist. Only a small ball, of course; enough to relax, not to stupefy. During an important negotiation, only a fool would drop a boulder into the stillness [7].
Still, he welcomed the double blessing the kunduri brought. For one, he had a welcome break while he rolled the ground leaves into ash from a lantern, shaped them into a ball and chewed them. That let him force the raw-skinned commander – dee Ootman, he called himself – into blessed silence for a few moments.
For another, the blissful relaxation of kunduri let him rebuild the aura of calm and relaxation which His Exalted Majesty had ordered in all dealings with these Raw Ones. Oh, this dee Ootman was not a complete fool, as far as such things went. But this outlander was so wrong-headed in his expectations that the difference was sometimes difficult to remember.
With the kunduri chewed and his spirit's essence restored, Lerunna turned his attention back to the outlander. As patiently as he could, he said, "You will not be admitted to see the King of Kings. You are not of the blessed; you cannot hear his voice."
How could even an ignorant outlander have so much difficulty grasping such a fundamental truth? No-one would be allowed to hear the Voice of Divinity without being of the right birth. Being an outlander was a disadvantage, but not an insurmountable one. Some of the Thousand Rooms had hosted outlanders as imperial guests, usually some desert chieftain who needed to be pacified, or occasional eastern delegations from the Islanders, Mutjing or Gunnagal. "If your western sta-tjol-der comes himself or sends one of his kin, perhaps His Exalted Majesty will grant his blessing and allow an audience."
The peasant interpreter looked worried when he had to translate that. The conversation between the two went back and forth for some time; Lerunna supposed that the interpreter was taking the opportunity to explain some truths to dee Ootman.
Taking advantage of the pause, Lerunna made a closer study of this outlander. His clothing was a mixture of marvel and stupidity. Made of some fibre called wool, or so he understood from the previous conversations, that was suppler than even the finest linen. Yet it was woven into strange tubes wrapped around arms and legs, and belted closely at his waist, in a form that seemed far too hot and uncomfortable.
This dee Ootman knew enough of proper appearance to wear a full beard, yet several of the outlanders with him did not. All of these men had pink skin which showed when they flushed. Likewise, his beard and hair were coloured orange-red; an odd hue for a commander. Some of his men had dark hair, and others had blonde, but the colour of their hair did not appear to correspond to any difference in rank.
Odd, very odd. Easterners all had dark hair, so they could not use that to distinguish amongst themselves. These westerners, though, had different classes and different hair colour. Why did they not use this information?
After the interpreter finished explaining a few truths, dee Ootman said, "If your King of Kings will not meet me, how can I be sure that he has agreed to terms of trade?"
Even the bliss of kunduri could not stop Lerunna from nodding in sheer disbelief at this outlander's ignorance. He composed himself, then said, "His Exalted Majesty has chosen me to speak on his behalf. I bear his message, I speak with his words. His Majesty is minded to allow trade, or he would not invite me to speak with you at all."
As the interpreter laboriously relayed his words into the outlander tongue, Lerunna reflected how frustrating it was to work through a peasant interpreter. Not to mention another sign of this dee Ootman's wrong-headedness. Any outlander who came to the White City to trade and negotiate should have taken the time to learn the Atjuntja tongue. The Islanders, warped through they were in other ways, had long known that. So did the few desert chieftains who had been permitted into the White City. Why did these raw-skinned outlanders not do the same?
Maybe, Lerunna wondered, dee Ootman was more cunning than he appeared. Maybe this bearded commander had learned the Atjuntja language, but chose not to reveal it. So far, dee Ootman had not shown any signs of understanding when he heard Lerunna speak, but maybe that was a ruse. Perhaps this outlander kept silent because he had more time to think while the interpreter relayed the words, or in case he overhead conversations. Lerunna decided that he would have to be careful speaking in the Atjuntja language in the presence of any outlanders, even if the interpreters were not present or not translating.
Dee Ootman said, "Your King of Kings' willingness to trade is welcome. Yet it is frustrating that we have had to wait so long before we could meet anyone to discuss trade."
Again, Lerunna wondered how this outlander could misunderstand something so simple. "You are in the dominion of the King of Kings, who fears nothing in the mortal realms. Here, you will follow his timing and his wishes. If you were in the realm of your sta-tjol-der, then you would do as he pleased. Here, you will wait on our pleasure."
Dee Ootman nodded when that was translated. The interpreter hastily explained that amongst these outlanders, a nod meant agreement rather than distrust or disapproval.
After that, they settled down to discuss trade terms. The negotiations were leisurely, drawn out over three days of production of samples, exchanges of gifts, presentation of food, and other appropriate courtesies. Dee Oootman learned quickly; by the end of the negotiations, he had become much more polite in his dealings.
The terms of trade which they eventually agreed were much as Lerunna had expected, of course. For all of the courtesy, exchange of gifts and marvellous products which these outlanders offered, they were strangers to this land. They had to accept His Exalted Majesty's terms if they wished to trade at all.
As per his instructions, Lerunna thus secured agreement to trade terms barely changed from what the Islanders followed. Trade was to be conducted at two ports on the western coast, with the land for the trading posts negotiated with the local governors. These outlander ships were not to make landfall anywhere other than the two trading posts, except in emergency if they needed food or repairs. If their ships had to land, then they should stay no longer than needed for repairs, food, or favourable weather for sailing.
Only the named trade goods were to be exchanged at the trading posts, and nothing else of value. If the outlanders had new goods which they wished to trade, they must first gain the approval of His Exalted Majesty or one of his governors. The outlanders could live and worship within the bounds of the trading posts, but when venturing outside, they would not speak of their own faith or seek to convert any of the King of Kings' subjects.
In all of the negotiations, only two matters gave Lerunna any real surprises. The first was when he stated that while the outlanders could build their own dwellings within the trading posts, they could not build any fortifications.
"What if we are threatened?" dee Ootman asked. "There are other nations whose ships may try to attack our trading posts."
A meaningless answer, as far as Lerunna was concerned. The whole of the Middle Country lived under the King of Kings' peace, and his sovereignty. His Exalted Majesty would protect people, and he would not suffer walls to be built around subject cities which might be used to support rebellion. The only exceptions came in frontier areas where the desert dwellers might raid. Even then, any wall-builders were carefully watched.
He said, "If you fear for your safety, ask of the governors, and they will provide Atjuntja troops for your protection."
The other surprising matter came when dee Ootman wanted to write the terms of the trade agreement. Very good to want it in writing, of course. Yet he presented some flimsy stuff which he called paper, and wanted the trade agreement written on that. Lerunna threw back his head and laughed at that nonsense. Oh, this lightweight material might perhaps be more useful than parchment for everyday messages and records, but what kind of fool would present it as a binding pact of trade?
He said, "What use have we for that material which is even more crumbling than parchment? No treaty set on parchment will last. Our agreement will be written in stone here in the White City, and repeated on land-stones at the sites of your trading posts."
--
Captain-General Frederik de Houtman stood on the stern of the Assendelft, watching as Witte Stad faded into the distance. First the trees and flowers blended into the background, then the shapes of the statues became impossible to discern, and then the docks blurred into insignificance. His last sight of Witte Stad was of the Twin Peaks, clad in green and stone, slowly vanishing in clouds that blew in from the west.
With the great city fading, de Houtman allowed a broad smile to creep across his face. "I do believe we will be congratulated for what we've accomplished here."
Captain Cornelisz de Vries nodded. "So we should be. A city like that... As God is my witness, never have I been so bittersweet about leaving a port. How can those people combine such wonder with such depravity?"
De Houtman shrugged. "They won't inflict their heathen rites on us." Of all the astonishing things in this city of wonders, the greatest was that the victims of this sacrificial blood-letting had all freely volunteered. "I'm not happy to witness those events, but it won't stop us trading with them."
Negotiating a trade treaty had taken much longer than it should have, especially the endless frustration of never getting any meeting with their emperor. Still, he had achieved the most important part of his mission: a trade agreement.
And what riches it would bring!
He knew, now, what trade goods would be preferred here. Even if when finding out, the Atjuntja had refused to call what they did trade. They had called it exchanges of gifts, since trade was only permitted to Dutchmen on their western coast. For now, anyway; that prohibition would not last forever.
The exchanges had been an acceptable substitute for trade, and had told him what he needed to know. These Atjuntja had been impressed with cotton textiles, with tin and steel, with rum, and most of all with the lacquered chest from Coromandel. They were not at all impressed with Brazilian tobacco, but then he did not like their version of tobacco, either. He had seen that some of it was brought on his ships anyway, naturally. Maybe others would find it more palatable. If not, sometimes any tobacco was better than none. Besides, he had a few samples of their kunduri, which was better than tobacco, in his estimation. Even if the Atjuntja had been horrified when he tried smoking it.
Regardless of how valuable this kunduri might prove to be, this land had many other goods of worth: gold, silver, sandalwood, indigo and other dyes, and salt. Some of their other produce might be valuable, too. The gum of their wealth-trees resembled gum arabic; perhaps it could be sold for a suitable profit. Their peppers had a hotter taste than any which de Houtman had ever experienced; maybe they, too, could be sold as a spice.
De Vries said, "Are you sure you want to sail no further east?"
"Quite. We have fulfilled our instructions," de Houtman said.
Enough of the instructions, at least. He had explored, charted, recorded and negotiated. He had secured a trade agreement and permission at two sites to be chosen – no doubt this Archers Nest, and somewhere else he would leave to the Governor-General to consider. He had met with a few of these Islanders who lived in this city's foreign quarter, and who had mentioned something of their own lands far to the east [8]. He had brought enough gold and silver to pay for the cost of this expedition, even if everything else he had found turned out to be worthless.
Oh, he had not quite fulfilled everything. He had not secured any of the natives by force, judging that it would do too much harm. One of his sailors had brought back a native mistress, but that woman would hardly be available for the Company's use. Nor had he extended the Netherlands' protection to these Atjuntja, but no-one could have achieved that.
He had accomplished everything that the Company could have hoped for, and more besides. As the three Dutch yachts navigated out of the harbour and began the slow journey west, de Houtman could only look forward with eager anticipation to the new tomorrows which awaited him.
--
[1] Witte Stad is Dutch for White City. It acquired this name because the native translators have a habit of translating the meaning of names, where they have such meanings, rather than transliterating them. So they consistently translated the city's component words into Dutch as Witte Stad. Thus, this became the name by which the White City would become known in the wider world. For a while, at least.
[2] Amsterdam, the largest city in the Netherlands at this time, had around 50,000 people. Rotterdam was smaller. The White City at its fullest holds around 200,000 people, and this expedition is visiting at a time when workers are not needed in the fields, so most of the drafted labourers are in residence. There were actually many cities larger than the White City at this time, even in Europe; London was slightly larger, and Paris about twice the size. However, the scale on which the White City is built makes it seem much larger than the relatively cramped, crowded European cities.
[3] The construction and repair of the White City is not always this laborious, but de Houtman's expedition visited during the peak season of the year, when drafted labour is present in large numbers, and when most of the maintenance is performed.
[4] This name is a mistranslation from the real Atjuntja name, which would be more accurately translated as the Garden of Ten Thousand Steps. The native translators did not yet have a complete grasp of the Dutch language.
[5] Stins has misunderstood the relationship between the peoples of the Middle Country. Originally, Yaora was the collective name for all of the related peoples who occupied the south-western portion of Aururia, including the Atjuntja themselves. The name is still sometimes used in that sense, but the more common modern usage is to refer to any non-Atjuntja subject people within the Middle Country. Yuduwungu and Madujal are the names of two of the subject peoples, and who are numerous enough that they make up the most common labour draftees to the White City.
[6] In his own mind, at least.
[7] This Atjuntja metaphor can be approximately translated as "only a fool would cloud his sense."
[8] De Houtman successfully sent some sailors to land in the Foreign Quarter of the White City. Those sailors met with some of the Nangu who lived there and learned some things about them, although all of the Nangu trading ships had left before de Houtman's sailors visited the Foreign Quarter.
--
Thoughts?
"She is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold."
- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act II, Scene IV
--
Excerpts from "My Life in the South-Land". Written by Pieter Stins, a sailor who served in de Houtman's first and second voyages to what would come to be called Aururia.
Our ships sailed into the harbour of Witte Stad [1] on 26 July. Even before we came ashore, we knew we had reached a city like no other in the South-Land. Buildings covered the shore, some in a large city in the main harbour, and a smaller quarter across the water. Neither quarter had walls, and even from a distance it seemed as if everything had been built on a colossal scale.
There were docks aplenty; unlike the smaller cities, Witte Stad had boats in abundance. A few boats moved in the harbour, most of them small vessels like those of the other cities. One was larger and completely strange; twin hulls, lateen rigged, steered with a rudder rather than steering oar. One of our translators said that this was an Islander ship, from some subject people who live in the east and who sail west to trade and to honour the native emperor.
The city officials had known we were coming. They declared that only Captain-General de Houtman and thirteen other men could come ashore into the main city at any one time. The rest would have to stay at the foreign quarter across the water.
The Captain-General did not trust them, and had our ships stay well out to sea in the main harbour. The natives were meticulous in watching and counting who came and went; throughout our time there, we would only ever have fourteen men ashore at any one time. I was fortunate enough to be among the thirteen whom the Captain-General chose to accompany him into Witte Stad...
My memories of Witte Stad are confused in their order and their sense. Throughout my time there, especially the first few days, it felt as if I were walking through a dream. This is a city like no other, the jewel of the Orient, a place of mystery, splendour and horror combined. Here, the native emperor has gathered everything important in his realm into one place; gold, stone, gardens, animals, men, and heathen gods.
Everything in the city has been built to be larger than life. A man cannot walk down any street without being dwarfed by statues, whether of men or idols, looming over him wherever he walks. It is crowded, thronging with men from all quarters of this realm. I know not the numbers, but there must be tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. More men and women dwell here in any city of the Netherlands, or any European city I have seen. Some cities of the Orient may be larger, but none that I have seen or heard of have been built on this scale designed to make men feel like mice [2].
Two sounds I always remember from my time in Witte Stad. One is the noises of construction and maintenance. Seldom can a man walk far in this city without witnessing the toils of those who serve their emperor. Men labour to move materials, to shape and repair statues, to smooth and maintain the roads, to build in wood and stone, to clean and polish buildings [3]. When their work itself is silent, then the natives provide their own noise, chanting and singing as they labour. I could not decide whether the music is because they are joyful to work or to take their minds from their endless labour.
Another sound I will never forget is the endless sound of water. It is not as loud as the toils of labour, but it is always present. Rare is it indeed to find a place in the city where a man cannot hear the sound of water, whether flowing, cascading, bubbling from fountains, or dripping from the mouths of statues.
The natives adore the sound of water, and devote much of their labour to ensuring that it can always be heard. Fountains are numerous throughout the city. Sometimes water spouts from elaborately carved statues, sometimes it cascades over rocks in melodies which the natives find pleasing, and often it fills basins where a man can drink his fill whenever he chooses.
Nowhere do the natives use water more lavishly than the place they call the Thousand-fold Garden [4]. This is a veritable wonder of nature, of carefully shaped stones and plants. An endless array of trees and shrubs, a maze of flowers and beauty, trod by ducks with feathers of a thousand hues. Amidst the Garden is always the sound of water; cascading over rocks, flowing down falls, or bubbling from artfully arranged fountains that mimic the natural world...
When I first witnessed the Garden, I thought that the natives must have heard of Eden as God made it in the beginning, and that they had done their best to create a replacement for it in this fallen world. Alas, I soon learned how mistaken I was in this regard.
The natives' beliefs are a corruption of Christianity. They refer to the Lord, but believe that they must make endless sacrifices. They know not that Christ died for all our sins, and kill men or shed their blood slowly in the name of pain. I will not commit to paper a full report of the bloodthirsty abominations they commit in the name of their perverted gospel. Theirs is a heathen religion of torture, the twisted worship of a false Christ, a malformed degradation of all that is good and holy...
The natives of Witte Stad are divided into two peoples. The people who call themselves the Atjuntja are the rulers; not all the people of this stock are considered noble, but they all think of themselves as better than their subjects. In skin and in features, there is naught to distinguish an Atjuntja from their subjects, but all of their men wear full beards, and they do not permit the same to their subjects. Most all of the Atjuntja have black hair.
Their subjects go by a variety of names; the one most common I heard was Yaora, but sometimes they call themselves Yuduwungu and Madujal [5]. Most of these Yaora have blonde or light hair, though their skins are much darker. With some of the Yaora men, their hair is darker, especially those who have grown older, but not yet old enough for their hair to turn gray or white. The men among them do not all shave, but those who have beards keep them trimmed short. Our native interpreters told me that among the Atjuntja, light hair is considered a sign of common blood, although the other Yaora do not care about it in the same way...
While Witte Stad is unlike the smaller towns and cities of the South-Land in many ways, it seems to me that most of all it is designed to be a spectacle. In its construction, its waters, and its streets, it is shaped to ensure that all who visit here know that this is the residence of their emperor.
It is kept that way by most careful arrangement. For these Atjuntja do not even allow animals to wander free and disturb the streets. While these people know nothing of sheep, horses or pigs, they have nooroons [emus], dogs and ducks, but they do not allow them to roam the streets, except for the multi-hued ducks in the Garden. They even keep out the pole-cats [quolls] that they use to hunt vermin. Perhaps animals are kept away because they are so fastidious about keeping their streets clean; I do not know. But I do know that this city is a place of wonder.
--
July-August 1620
Witte Stad / Milgawee [White City]
D'Edels Land / Tiayal [western coast of Australia]
A cool breeze swept across North Water into the Foreign Quarter. Standing on the shore, looking west to the twin peaks at the heart of the greatest Ajuntja city, Yuma thought that the wind was most appropriate. It brought the tangy aroma of salt water, diluted slightly by fragrances of eucalypts and shrubs, a silent reminder that these Atjuntja worshipped nature instead of understanding it. Still, more important than the smell, the wind blew from the direction of the three strange ships that waited silently in the other harbour, West Water.
Yuma, third-most senior trading captain of the Tjula bloodline, was not usually a man given to indecision. Few Nangu trading captains were. In a world where the greatest profit went to the boldest, a captain who hesitated would be lucky if his bloodline elders did not strip him of his command or find his crew deserting for captains who earned greater wealth and glory.
Now, though, he had found himself watching for two days, and he had still come no closer to a decision. He was the captain of the last Nangu great-ship of the winter's trading fleet to remain in Milgawee. The rest had departed over the last two weeks. Those with better captains carried cargoes of sandalwood, spices, gold and fragrant oils; those with weaker captains bore mostly iron, silver, or dyes.
Yuma himself had brought his ship, the Restless, to these western lands with a cargo of kunduri, Tjibarr jewellery, and gum cider. He had carefully negotiated a series of exchanges of most of this cargo for sandalwood and gold. He could have finished his trading a week ago, but had held on to the rest of his loading of kunduri to see if he could bargain for a better deal once the Atjuntja realised that the other ships were gone and that no more kunduri could be had until the next trading fleet arrived months later.
Thanks to that delay, and perhaps the guidance of the sixth path, he had been the first Nangu captain to glimpse these strange ships enter the harbour. Ships larger than even the finest Nangu great-ship. Perhaps not as manoeuvrable, but an intimidating sight nonetheless. He had known instantly that these were foreigners; the pitiful Atjuntja knowledge of shipbuilding would not allow them to build anything remotely approaching the quality of these ships.
Word from across the water at the main quarter of Milgawee brought endless rumours of the strangers who used these ships. Raw-skinned men from beyond the world, as the Atjuntja understood it. Men with strange skills and crafts, none more awe-inspiring than that they could bind thunderbolts and use them as weapons. Men who had visited the western coast the previous year and killed Atjuntja soldiers, but who had returned speaking of peace. Apparently the commander of these raw-skinned men had been admitted to the Palace of a Thousand Rooms to meet with the King of Kings.
Yuma doubted that last part of the rumours, at least. The myriad complexities of Atjuntja protocol would not allow the King of Kings to meet with any stranger so easily. Not that it would matter; the Atjuntja conducted such negotiations through intermediaries anyway.
Still, no matter what the Atjuntja babbled about, he knew that these strangers must be men like any other. No-one had ever heard of any western islands worth visiting before, and the King of Kings' edict against western exploration meant that few Nangu had tried to find such islands. But it was only sensible that such lands existed. After all, if the Maori came from Aotearoa beyond the sunrise, why should there not be other islands beyond the sunset?
Which left Yuma in an odd position. He was, for now, the only Nangu trading captain to know about these strange ships from beyond the west. A few Nangu lived here permanently, but they were of no consequence for his purposes. No-one else back on the Island would hear word of these strangers for months unless he carried it.
So he had to decide whether to approach them, and how to find out what he could. If these raw-skins were wealthy, trade with them could prove to be very valuable. Unfortunately, there was another problem. The bearded Atjuntja buffoons were always wary of any Nangu captains who sailed further west; they preferred trade to flow through their home ports. They would be very suspicious of anything which they saw as an attempt to bypass them.
Then he had to consider these strangers themselves. They had been told that they could dock in the Foreign Quarter, if they wished, but they had chosen to keep their ships well out in the harbour. These actions spoke of a people who were full of suspicion. Any surreptitious attempts to sail to those ships would be more likely to bring an attack than a conversation. And the few strangers who went ashore to the main quarter of the city were being closely watched, he was sure. It would be difficult to speak to them without the Atjuntja finding out.
As he stared across the water, Yuma decided that for now, it would not be worth his while trying to contact these raw-skinned strangers. They were only three ships in one visit; they would not have that much worth trading for directly. Better to finish his own trading for now and sail back to the Island.
Once back home, he could consider other ways to take advantage of this new discovery. Perhaps take a great-ship further west into the sunset, to see if he could find these stranger's home islands. Or he could bring a more carefully-chosen cargo next time, with more samples of many goods, to find out what these raw-skinned strangers wanted to trade for.
For now, though, he decided these strangers should be left alone.
--
Lerunna Mundi, chamberlain of the palace, most favoured servant of the Petal Throne [6], reached for the kunduri pouch at his waist. Only a small ball, of course; enough to relax, not to stupefy. During an important negotiation, only a fool would drop a boulder into the stillness [7].
Still, he welcomed the double blessing the kunduri brought. For one, he had a welcome break while he rolled the ground leaves into ash from a lantern, shaped them into a ball and chewed them. That let him force the raw-skinned commander – dee Ootman, he called himself – into blessed silence for a few moments.
For another, the blissful relaxation of kunduri let him rebuild the aura of calm and relaxation which His Exalted Majesty had ordered in all dealings with these Raw Ones. Oh, this dee Ootman was not a complete fool, as far as such things went. But this outlander was so wrong-headed in his expectations that the difference was sometimes difficult to remember.
With the kunduri chewed and his spirit's essence restored, Lerunna turned his attention back to the outlander. As patiently as he could, he said, "You will not be admitted to see the King of Kings. You are not of the blessed; you cannot hear his voice."
How could even an ignorant outlander have so much difficulty grasping such a fundamental truth? No-one would be allowed to hear the Voice of Divinity without being of the right birth. Being an outlander was a disadvantage, but not an insurmountable one. Some of the Thousand Rooms had hosted outlanders as imperial guests, usually some desert chieftain who needed to be pacified, or occasional eastern delegations from the Islanders, Mutjing or Gunnagal. "If your western sta-tjol-der comes himself or sends one of his kin, perhaps His Exalted Majesty will grant his blessing and allow an audience."
The peasant interpreter looked worried when he had to translate that. The conversation between the two went back and forth for some time; Lerunna supposed that the interpreter was taking the opportunity to explain some truths to dee Ootman.
Taking advantage of the pause, Lerunna made a closer study of this outlander. His clothing was a mixture of marvel and stupidity. Made of some fibre called wool, or so he understood from the previous conversations, that was suppler than even the finest linen. Yet it was woven into strange tubes wrapped around arms and legs, and belted closely at his waist, in a form that seemed far too hot and uncomfortable.
This dee Ootman knew enough of proper appearance to wear a full beard, yet several of the outlanders with him did not. All of these men had pink skin which showed when they flushed. Likewise, his beard and hair were coloured orange-red; an odd hue for a commander. Some of his men had dark hair, and others had blonde, but the colour of their hair did not appear to correspond to any difference in rank.
Odd, very odd. Easterners all had dark hair, so they could not use that to distinguish amongst themselves. These westerners, though, had different classes and different hair colour. Why did they not use this information?
After the interpreter finished explaining a few truths, dee Ootman said, "If your King of Kings will not meet me, how can I be sure that he has agreed to terms of trade?"
Even the bliss of kunduri could not stop Lerunna from nodding in sheer disbelief at this outlander's ignorance. He composed himself, then said, "His Exalted Majesty has chosen me to speak on his behalf. I bear his message, I speak with his words. His Majesty is minded to allow trade, or he would not invite me to speak with you at all."
As the interpreter laboriously relayed his words into the outlander tongue, Lerunna reflected how frustrating it was to work through a peasant interpreter. Not to mention another sign of this dee Ootman's wrong-headedness. Any outlander who came to the White City to trade and negotiate should have taken the time to learn the Atjuntja tongue. The Islanders, warped through they were in other ways, had long known that. So did the few desert chieftains who had been permitted into the White City. Why did these raw-skinned outlanders not do the same?
Maybe, Lerunna wondered, dee Ootman was more cunning than he appeared. Maybe this bearded commander had learned the Atjuntja language, but chose not to reveal it. So far, dee Ootman had not shown any signs of understanding when he heard Lerunna speak, but maybe that was a ruse. Perhaps this outlander kept silent because he had more time to think while the interpreter relayed the words, or in case he overhead conversations. Lerunna decided that he would have to be careful speaking in the Atjuntja language in the presence of any outlanders, even if the interpreters were not present or not translating.
Dee Ootman said, "Your King of Kings' willingness to trade is welcome. Yet it is frustrating that we have had to wait so long before we could meet anyone to discuss trade."
Again, Lerunna wondered how this outlander could misunderstand something so simple. "You are in the dominion of the King of Kings, who fears nothing in the mortal realms. Here, you will follow his timing and his wishes. If you were in the realm of your sta-tjol-der, then you would do as he pleased. Here, you will wait on our pleasure."
Dee Ootman nodded when that was translated. The interpreter hastily explained that amongst these outlanders, a nod meant agreement rather than distrust or disapproval.
After that, they settled down to discuss trade terms. The negotiations were leisurely, drawn out over three days of production of samples, exchanges of gifts, presentation of food, and other appropriate courtesies. Dee Oootman learned quickly; by the end of the negotiations, he had become much more polite in his dealings.
The terms of trade which they eventually agreed were much as Lerunna had expected, of course. For all of the courtesy, exchange of gifts and marvellous products which these outlanders offered, they were strangers to this land. They had to accept His Exalted Majesty's terms if they wished to trade at all.
As per his instructions, Lerunna thus secured agreement to trade terms barely changed from what the Islanders followed. Trade was to be conducted at two ports on the western coast, with the land for the trading posts negotiated with the local governors. These outlander ships were not to make landfall anywhere other than the two trading posts, except in emergency if they needed food or repairs. If their ships had to land, then they should stay no longer than needed for repairs, food, or favourable weather for sailing.
Only the named trade goods were to be exchanged at the trading posts, and nothing else of value. If the outlanders had new goods which they wished to trade, they must first gain the approval of His Exalted Majesty or one of his governors. The outlanders could live and worship within the bounds of the trading posts, but when venturing outside, they would not speak of their own faith or seek to convert any of the King of Kings' subjects.
In all of the negotiations, only two matters gave Lerunna any real surprises. The first was when he stated that while the outlanders could build their own dwellings within the trading posts, they could not build any fortifications.
"What if we are threatened?" dee Ootman asked. "There are other nations whose ships may try to attack our trading posts."
A meaningless answer, as far as Lerunna was concerned. The whole of the Middle Country lived under the King of Kings' peace, and his sovereignty. His Exalted Majesty would protect people, and he would not suffer walls to be built around subject cities which might be used to support rebellion. The only exceptions came in frontier areas where the desert dwellers might raid. Even then, any wall-builders were carefully watched.
He said, "If you fear for your safety, ask of the governors, and they will provide Atjuntja troops for your protection."
The other surprising matter came when dee Ootman wanted to write the terms of the trade agreement. Very good to want it in writing, of course. Yet he presented some flimsy stuff which he called paper, and wanted the trade agreement written on that. Lerunna threw back his head and laughed at that nonsense. Oh, this lightweight material might perhaps be more useful than parchment for everyday messages and records, but what kind of fool would present it as a binding pact of trade?
He said, "What use have we for that material which is even more crumbling than parchment? No treaty set on parchment will last. Our agreement will be written in stone here in the White City, and repeated on land-stones at the sites of your trading posts."
--
Captain-General Frederik de Houtman stood on the stern of the Assendelft, watching as Witte Stad faded into the distance. First the trees and flowers blended into the background, then the shapes of the statues became impossible to discern, and then the docks blurred into insignificance. His last sight of Witte Stad was of the Twin Peaks, clad in green and stone, slowly vanishing in clouds that blew in from the west.
With the great city fading, de Houtman allowed a broad smile to creep across his face. "I do believe we will be congratulated for what we've accomplished here."
Captain Cornelisz de Vries nodded. "So we should be. A city like that... As God is my witness, never have I been so bittersweet about leaving a port. How can those people combine such wonder with such depravity?"
De Houtman shrugged. "They won't inflict their heathen rites on us." Of all the astonishing things in this city of wonders, the greatest was that the victims of this sacrificial blood-letting had all freely volunteered. "I'm not happy to witness those events, but it won't stop us trading with them."
Negotiating a trade treaty had taken much longer than it should have, especially the endless frustration of never getting any meeting with their emperor. Still, he had achieved the most important part of his mission: a trade agreement.
And what riches it would bring!
He knew, now, what trade goods would be preferred here. Even if when finding out, the Atjuntja had refused to call what they did trade. They had called it exchanges of gifts, since trade was only permitted to Dutchmen on their western coast. For now, anyway; that prohibition would not last forever.
The exchanges had been an acceptable substitute for trade, and had told him what he needed to know. These Atjuntja had been impressed with cotton textiles, with tin and steel, with rum, and most of all with the lacquered chest from Coromandel. They were not at all impressed with Brazilian tobacco, but then he did not like their version of tobacco, either. He had seen that some of it was brought on his ships anyway, naturally. Maybe others would find it more palatable. If not, sometimes any tobacco was better than none. Besides, he had a few samples of their kunduri, which was better than tobacco, in his estimation. Even if the Atjuntja had been horrified when he tried smoking it.
Regardless of how valuable this kunduri might prove to be, this land had many other goods of worth: gold, silver, sandalwood, indigo and other dyes, and salt. Some of their other produce might be valuable, too. The gum of their wealth-trees resembled gum arabic; perhaps it could be sold for a suitable profit. Their peppers had a hotter taste than any which de Houtman had ever experienced; maybe they, too, could be sold as a spice.
De Vries said, "Are you sure you want to sail no further east?"
"Quite. We have fulfilled our instructions," de Houtman said.
Enough of the instructions, at least. He had explored, charted, recorded and negotiated. He had secured a trade agreement and permission at two sites to be chosen – no doubt this Archers Nest, and somewhere else he would leave to the Governor-General to consider. He had met with a few of these Islanders who lived in this city's foreign quarter, and who had mentioned something of their own lands far to the east [8]. He had brought enough gold and silver to pay for the cost of this expedition, even if everything else he had found turned out to be worthless.
Oh, he had not quite fulfilled everything. He had not secured any of the natives by force, judging that it would do too much harm. One of his sailors had brought back a native mistress, but that woman would hardly be available for the Company's use. Nor had he extended the Netherlands' protection to these Atjuntja, but no-one could have achieved that.
He had accomplished everything that the Company could have hoped for, and more besides. As the three Dutch yachts navigated out of the harbour and began the slow journey west, de Houtman could only look forward with eager anticipation to the new tomorrows which awaited him.
--
[1] Witte Stad is Dutch for White City. It acquired this name because the native translators have a habit of translating the meaning of names, where they have such meanings, rather than transliterating them. So they consistently translated the city's component words into Dutch as Witte Stad. Thus, this became the name by which the White City would become known in the wider world. For a while, at least.
[2] Amsterdam, the largest city in the Netherlands at this time, had around 50,000 people. Rotterdam was smaller. The White City at its fullest holds around 200,000 people, and this expedition is visiting at a time when workers are not needed in the fields, so most of the drafted labourers are in residence. There were actually many cities larger than the White City at this time, even in Europe; London was slightly larger, and Paris about twice the size. However, the scale on which the White City is built makes it seem much larger than the relatively cramped, crowded European cities.
[3] The construction and repair of the White City is not always this laborious, but de Houtman's expedition visited during the peak season of the year, when drafted labour is present in large numbers, and when most of the maintenance is performed.
[4] This name is a mistranslation from the real Atjuntja name, which would be more accurately translated as the Garden of Ten Thousand Steps. The native translators did not yet have a complete grasp of the Dutch language.
[5] Stins has misunderstood the relationship between the peoples of the Middle Country. Originally, Yaora was the collective name for all of the related peoples who occupied the south-western portion of Aururia, including the Atjuntja themselves. The name is still sometimes used in that sense, but the more common modern usage is to refer to any non-Atjuntja subject people within the Middle Country. Yuduwungu and Madujal are the names of two of the subject peoples, and who are numerous enough that they make up the most common labour draftees to the White City.
[6] In his own mind, at least.
[7] This Atjuntja metaphor can be approximately translated as "only a fool would cloud his sense."
[8] De Houtman successfully sent some sailors to land in the Foreign Quarter of the White City. Those sailors met with some of the Nangu who lived there and learned some things about them, although all of the Nangu trading ships had left before de Houtman's sailors visited the Foreign Quarter.
--
Thoughts?
This was a very well thought put piece, kudos!
The descriptions were grand and epic, truly engrossing to read, the White City sounds incredible!
Using multiple view points was a good idea, it gave a more varied feel to the narration and stories, add in more detailed and unique world building, but also as a clever means of speeding up the passage of time so you could reach a conclusion naturally and as a good times.
The difficulties of the trade, the differing politics, culture and mis-interpretation of the religions and the view of the outsiders were all very intriguing, I hope that mistress is OK, also I like that regardless of their differing views they're just like "Nah. we'll trade anyway" XD
The descriptions were grand and epic, truly engrossing to read, the White City sounds incredible!
Using multiple view points was a good idea, it gave a more varied feel to the narration and stories, add in more detailed and unique world building, but also as a clever means of speeding up the passage of time so you could reach a conclusion naturally and as a good times.
The difficulties of the trade, the differing politics, culture and mis-interpretation of the religions and the view of the outsiders were all very intriguing, I hope that mistress is OK, also I like that regardless of their differing views they're just like "Nah. we'll trade anyway" XD
Generally speaking the mistresses will be okay. Which is to say will not be treated any worse than Europeans of the time treated women in general (viz, far from perfect, but not as complete slaves, either).
On a broader note, I'll be largely offline for the next 2-3 weeks due to various commitments. Your regularly scheduled Lands of Red and Gold updates will resume when I return.
That is good to hear, thanks and good luck!
Lands of Red and Gold #24: Of Traders, Treasures and Trailblazers
Lands of Red and Gold #24: Of Traders, Treasures and Trailblazers
"Portugal and Spain held the keys of the treasure house of the east and the west. But it was neither Portugal with her tiny population, and her empire that was little more than a line of forts and factories 10,000 miles long, nor Spain, for centuries an army on the march and now staggering beneath the responsibilities of her vast and scattered empire, devout to fanaticism, and with an incapacity for economic affairs which seemed almost inspired, which reaped the material harvest of the empires into which they had stepped, the one by patient toil, the other by luck. Gathering spoils which they could not retain, and amassing wealth which slipped through their fingers, they were little more than the political agents of minds more astute and characters better versed in the arts of peace... The economic capital of the new civilization was Antwerp... its typical figure, the paymaster of princes, was the international financier.
Convulsions of war and tides of religion unseated Antwerp from its commercial throne, the city besieged and its dissenting inhabitants dispersed. While force of arms might move borders, wealth migrated according to its own dictates, not the whims of princes. As the seventeenth century neared, international commerce continued in Amsterdam from where it had halted in Antwerp..."
- W H Stanhope, "Religion and the Birth of Capitalism"
--
Captain-General Frederik de Houtman's second voyage to Aururia was, for the Dutch, a shining success. A trade agreement had been negotiated, and a valuable collection of sample trade goods had been brought back to guide the Company's merchants in their pursuit of profit. Better yet, the expedition had brought back a host of information in charts, logs and journals to aid in the planning and conduct of further ventures.
The descendants of the Atjuntja and the other Aururian peoples would not have quite the same view of de Houtman's voyage. Of course, that was hardly something that concerned Governor-General Coen or the other senior officers of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. De Houtman and his fellow captains were showered with honours on their return.
Along with the honours, Jan Pieterszoon Coen gave the captains and their crews strict orders not to talk about their new discoveries. All had sworn oaths to the Company and to the United Netherlands, and those oaths had to be obeyed. They were to reveal nothing of this new South-Land, particularly about its wealth, and most particularly its location.
This order lasted about as long as it took the Dutch sailors to reach the nearest tavern.
The Dutch sailors did not intend to tell foreigners the secrets, exactly, but alcohol and secrets rarely go together. Mostly, they talked to other Dutchmen, who in turn repeated rumours to other compatriots. The taverns of Batavia were not the exclusive preserve of Dutchmen; apart from the local Javanese, this was a trading post sometimes visited by Englishmen, and occasionally by the Portuguese [1].
The Dutch sailors did not give detailed directions, but, inevitably, they talked. Within a few months, the Javanese, English and Portuguese knew that the VOC had discovered some fantastical new land somewhere to the south. Or was it to the east? Rumours spread, no two of them the same, about where this new land was and what it contained. The stories spread to Timor, to Malaya, to Surat, and in time to London, Lisbon and Madrid...
--
With the prestige secured from his second voyage, de Houtman successfully manoeuvred for command of the third expedition to the South-Land. He obtained appointment to the task of negotiating for the construction of the first Dutch outpost on the South-Land, and overseeing the first trade conducted there.
De Houtman set about his new task with enthusiasm. With a fresh fleet of ships loaded with carefully-chosen supplies, he returned to the South-Land in 1621 to establish a trading post. His chosen site was familiar from two previous visits: the Swan River. Given that he had already secured the permission of the King of Kings, it did not take long for de Houtman to negotiate the local governor's agreement to set up his new trading outpost.
De Houtman had chosen a site on the south bank at the mouth of the Swan River, at a distance he thought was about fifteen miles from the local garrison-city. He optimistically called the site Fort Nassau [Fremantle], even though his trade treaty stated – and the governor had reiterated – that no fortifications were to be built. His sailors were set to the task of constructing houses and other key dwellings. De Houtman used a few judiciously-chosen gifts to obtain the assistance of some local labourers to speed the process. Fort Nassau was developed into a useable state and declared open after three months, although completing some stone buildings would take over another year.
Atjuntja nobles and merchants (often the same people) had already started to gather before Fort Nassau officially opened. The samples of Dutch trade goods the previous year had attracted a great deal of interest, and de Houtman assured all arrivals that they would be given the opportunity to bargain for similar goods. De Houtman had always been an astute bargainer, and he was in a particularly favourable situation here. In most cases, the Atjuntja merchants bid against each other to obtain the most favoured goods.
Even with his previous experience of the White City, he was surprised by some of the priorities they set. The most highly-prized items were anything which showed great craftsmanship; lacquered goods, richly-decorated textiles, and the like. Steel ingots were worth half their weight in gold, and tin ingots only slightly less valued. Rum and brandy were held in similarly high esteem, especially after de Houtman's traders generously provided some free samples. Wine, though, they would not accept. Nor, despite his best efforts, could he persuade any Atjuntja to trade lead ingots for anything.
In exchange, de Houtman's trade ships were laden down with the commodities he had most desired. Gold and silver in abundance. Sandalwood in smaller quantities but, if anything, greater value. Dyes, especially their magnificent indigo. Considerable quantities of their mints and peppers and lesser spices, brought mostly to see if they could be resold for greater value. Yet despite his best efforts, he could not persuade any Atjuntja to offer kunduri at a price he would accept. Instead, he received many variations of responses which amounted to, "Kunduri is not something we trade, it is something we trade for."
Still, after de Houtman concluding his trading, he had the ebullient feeling that he had accomplished as much here as in his previous voyage. He left Fort Nassau in the command of a junior officer, and sailed for Batavia. There, he received another hero's welcome. As de Houtman had expected, Coen was well-pleased with him.
Unfortunately, Coen would not stay pleased for long.
--
With trade expanding between Batavia and the South-Land, the rumours of newfound Dutch wealth spread ever further. They caused some consternation in London, where the governor and directors of the East India Trading Company had been considering a delicate situation.
An opportunity had arisen in the Middle East, where Persia had declared war on Spain, and was besieging the Spanish garrison on the island of Kishm, near the vital Spanish-held island of Hormuz. That port had been in Portuguese and then Spanish hands for nearly a century, and offered a gateway to Persia. The Persian commanders had requested English help in capturing Kishm and then Hormuz, and had offered to allow English merchants entry into the valuable silk trade.
Alas, opportunity was balanced by danger, namely, the risk of outright war with Spain. England and Spain had been at peace for nearly two decades, and the Company might find that its pursuit of profit in the Gulf would cause a broader war. The heads of the Company were minded to ignore that risk, trusting to Providence and the good offices of King James I to ensure peace was preserved.
However, now the governor and directors had a new risk to consider: the rising power of the Dutch, and more precisely that of the VOC. The two companies had been rivals in the East Indies for two decades, until they negotiated a recent truce. Now, if the VOC had found a spectacular new source of wealth, could they be trusted to hold to that truce? If not, perhaps it would be better to cooperate with Spain against the Dutch, rather than starting what could become two wars.
The directors considered this dilemma for a few days. In the end, they decided that the immediate opportunity was worthwhile. Trade with Persia would be a valuable new market. Besides, the Spanish were Catholics, and not to be trusted. So they accepted the proposed alliance with the Persians, and decided that they would deal with the consequences when they came.
The planned attack on Kishm Island went ahead two weeks later than originally planned. The English fleet bombarded the fort and quickly forced the Spanish garrison to surrender; the assault sustained very few casualties [2]. Bolstered by this success, the English and Persian forces conducted a joint operation against Hormuz, with the Persians attacking by land while the English scattered the Spanish fleet and bombarding the castle.
Hormuz surrendered on 7 May 1622, and the Persians took control of the island, while the Spanish retreated to a secondary outpost at Muscat. Honouring their agreement, all Christian prisoners were repatriated to England, and plans began for the exchange of English cloth for Persian silk. Spain was outraged, and the Company was forced to pay ten thousand pounds each to James I and the Duke of Buckingham in compensation for the efforts they went to in preserving peace [3].
--
Frederik de Houtman was an extraordinary man. An explorer, but also a self-promoter and liar. An astronomer and a visionary, recorder of constellations unknown and charter of lands unvisited by Europeans. A linguist who recorded the first European dictionary of the Malayan language, and an optimist who always trusted that fate would reward him. An opportunist with an eye for the main chance, but whose vision ultimately deserted him.
After his three voyages to the South-Land, de Houtman was eager to return to the Netherlands to describe in person what he had found. And, of course, to receive the adulation he believed he deserved for his discoveries.
Governor-General Coen willingly allowed de Houtman to return home, but was dismayed by what happened when the explorer made it to the Netherlands. De Houtman took the opportunity to describe his triumphs ad nauseum. He was careful enough to present his tales only to those who could be relied upon to keep the details secret: Company lords and officers, the Stadtholder, and other government officials.
Unfortunately, that was the limit of de Houtman's discretion. To hear him speak, a listener would believe that his actions alone had been responsible for the discovery of the South-Land. And that no-one else had the wit to recognise the opportunities. To add to his misdoings, de Houtman presented a magnificent golden neck-ring to Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel. This neck-ring was a prize which de Houtman had collected while in the South-Land, but he had retained it rather than giving it to the Company.
De Houtman's generous gift endeared him to the Stadtholder, but it enraged the Lords Seventeen. Combined with his ever more frequent self-promotion, it ensured that he would never be trusted by the Company again. De Houtman was denied any further commissions, and lived out the remainder of his life in Europe. While he died a rich man, he never again set foot on the South-Land.
--
As the years turned, despite de Houtman's departure, and regardless of the distant battles and manoeuvring in the Gulf, the Dutch were busy shipping goods to and from their newly-discovered land. A few outbound fleets from the Netherlands were ordered to stop at Fort Nassau on their way to Batavia, conducting trade with the Atjuntja merchants. Prices had fallen after the initial novelty – no longer did the Atjuntja value steel as half the worth of gold – but any Dutch ship which stopped to trade at Fort Nassau always left with more valuable cargo than when it arrived.
Fortunately for the Dutch, the Atjuntja and the rest of the world, the long shipping times meant that most diseases were not exchanged between the two peoples. Incubation periods were mostly too short; a disease would burn its way through a ship's crew either before it reached the South-Land, or before the departing ships made their next landfall at Batavia.
Not all diseases were contained by the ocean barrier, of course. The first venereal diseases had been left behind at Seal Point in 1620 when de Houtman's expedition visited there. Blue-sleep was an ever-present threat to Dutch sailors when they came ashore; many of them caught the illness. Yet this was a fast-burning disease; while many sailors fell ill and some died from it, it ran through a ship's crew before they reached the Indies.
The greatest threat awaiting the Dutch in the South-Land was the malady called the Waiting Death. No epidemic of Marnitja had swept through the Atjuntja lands in the last decade before the Dutch arrival, so they were safe, for now.
The isolation of the seas would not last, of course. Eventually an asymptomatic carrier would make the journey, or a fast ship would carry disease to a new shore. If nothing else, some maladies would linger in blankets or textiles and bring Eurasian diseases to the South-Land, or Aururian diseases to the Old World, but that time was not yet.
--
While the Company officers were glad of the profitable trade they had found at Fort Nassau, they were eager to discover more. The first visit to the White City had told them that the Islanders lived far to the east, but not the details of how to travel there.
So a few of their officers did some exploration by land along the Atjuntja road network. That was tolerated, up to a point, provided that they did not attempt to trade. Yet they were always watched, and discouraged most strongly from coming by land to the White City or any other place where they might encounter Islander traders. The King of Kings did not wish his two trading partners to contact each other directly, realising full well the problems that this would bring for the carefully controlled Atjuntja internal trade and tribute networks.
Thus, the Dutch land explorations gave them some grasp of the geography of the Atjuntja dominions, but did not let them explore any further trade. Some inland regions were also expressly off limits, such as the vicinity of Star Hill or the main gold mines at Golden Blood. To build new trade networks, they would have to venture along the seas.
In 1622, Governor-General Coen ordered the first voyage be sent to explore past the Atjuntja dominions in pursuit of new trade markets. Pieter Dirkzoon was named captain of the Leeuwin, with the yacht Nijptang accompanying, and given orders to explore the southern coast of the South-Land. He was instructed to explore east past the White City, in the hope of reaching the Islander homeland and determining whether it was worthwhile establishing direct trade with this barely-known people.
Mindful of the Atjuntja watchfulness, Dirkzoon led his two ships from Batavia to Fort Nassau, where they resupplied before steering well south of Cape Hasewint [Cape Leeuwin]. His ships stayed out at sea until they had passed what they judged to be the easternmost Atjuntja dominion, Red Eye, then turned north.
As it happened, Dirkzoon was correct in his navigation, and he brought his ships close to the shore at what were no longer Ajuntja lands.
Unfortunately, these lands were uninhabited for good reason. The endless westerly winds gave the Dutch ships great speed, but the coast they faced was the bleakest that any of them had ever seen or heard of. This barren stretch of coast consisted of seemingly-endless sea cliffs, imposing bulwarks of stone which reached 300 feet high or more, stretching from horizon to everlasting horizon. Above the cliff-tops was nothing at all but featureless emptiness; no trees, no rivers emptying, nothing but hundreds of miles of unwelcoming hostility.
The coast was ever-intimidating, never approachable. Besides the fierce winds pushing them against the cliffs, the seas themselves were a threat. Immense wind-driven swells broke endlessly upon the sea-cliffs, slowly eroding their bases, with force that would shatter even the largest ship to driftwood and splinters in an instant.
In an unusual display of originality, since new lands were normally named after high-ranking Company officers, Dirkzoon christened this endless barrenness as Kust van de Nachtmerrie [Nightmare Coast].
With such an unwelcoming and dangerous coast, Dirkzoon could not keep his ships constantly in sight of the shoreline. To do so risked disaster, since a gust of wind or more than usually potent set of swells would destroy his ships in a heartbeat. Thus, while he maintained enough sightings of the cliffs to know that they continued, he missed the one small break in the cliffs which marked a lonely Islander settlement that the locals so aptly christened in their own language as Isolation.
Dirkzoon kept on, doggedly persistent, until his expedition reached a point where the sea cliffs turned to the south-east. This was the worst possible direction, since it would force the ships ever further away from Batavia. His orders had anticipated sailing around the South-Land and back up to tropical latitudes, where he could return to Batavia in relative safety.
Alas, he now faced seemingly endless sea-cliffs stretching away in the wrong direction. For all Dirkzoon knew, the bleakly featureless cliffs stretched all the way to the South Pole. While he knew that the Islanders lived here somewhere, he did not know how far, or how friendly they would be. With dwindling supplies, hostile seas, and the prospect of a very slow voyage back west against the wind, he was minded to turn back.
Decision time came when the two ships reached a couple of small islands off the coast. The seas calmed enough to allow a few boats to venture ashore and confirm that these islands were uninhabited. The sailors replenished their supplies of fresh water from the islands, but otherwise found that these isolated rocky outposts had nothing to commend them.
While Dirkzoon's ships lingered at these two islands, a rare shift in the wind saw the breeze come from the east. This fortunate change was enough to convince Dirkzoon to turn back; he might not get another such opportunity. So he ended his exploration and brought his two ships back to Batavia, where he provided them with charts and descriptions of bleakness, but not the new trading markets which Coen had sought [4].
--
With the failure of Dirkzoon's 1622 expedition, Coen and the VOC decided to focus other priorities, rather than further exploration. War had broken out with Spain-Portugal in 1621. The Company concentrated its efforts on protecting its Far Eastern holdings and seizing other places of known value, rather than diverting valuable ships for another costly, challenging, and probably fruitless expedition. Instead, in accordance with their treaty, they built a second trading post near the Atjuntja garrison-city of Seal Point, which they called Fort Zeelandia. Being nearer to the salt-harvesting regions, this new outpost saw greater trading in salt, but otherwise its goods were similar to Fort Nassau.
Coen knew that the South-Land contained other nations and markets. However, he had also learned that gold and sandalwood, the most valuable goods of the South-Land, were what the Islanders came to Atjuntja lands to trade for. They would not find these goods if they ventured further east. The only known trade goods from further east were kunduri and gum cider. Gum cider was of little value to the Company. Kunduri was spoiled in Coen's eyes for another reason: when he had first tried smoking it, he had inhaled so much of the stronger substance that it had caused him to vomit. He had refused to try kunduri again, and decided that it was worthless. While some other Company officers had sampled the drug and now savoured it, Coen was too stubborn to change his mind.
Thus, over the next four years, Coen ordered that Company ships focus on the known rewards of gold, sandalwood and sweet peppers [5]. This provided valuable capital for supporting Company activities elsewhere in the Orient, particularly for building new ships and recruiting mercenaries for garrisons and raids. The wealth of Asia beckoned; Coen hoped to monopolise shipping between the nations. The commodities of the South-Land were merely building blocks in the corporate edifice he wanted to construct.
The Company only decided to change its policy when it received direct word from the Islanders. In late 1625, a Nangu trading captain named Yuma Tjula discreetly arranged for some Djarwari labourers returning to their homeland to pass on an invitation to the commander of Fort Nassau. This gave the Dutch enough of a description of the southern coast of the South-Land to know how to sail to Islander-held territory.
With this inspiration, the Lords Seventeen commissioned a new expedition of discovery. They sent three ships, under the command of François Thijssen in the Valk, to make contact with the Islanders. Unlike his predecessor, Thijssen was given explicit orders to explore further east, to find a way around the expected edge of the South-Land and return to Batavia by a more northerly route.
So, in 1626 and 1627, François Thijssen commanded an expedition which some would later claim to make him the greatest European explorer of Aururia. Even those who did not give him that rank placed him a close second behind Frederik de Houtman.
Thijssen did not visit set out from Fort Nassau as his predecessor had done, but came directly from Europe via Mauritius. Knowing that the winds were more reliable in higher latitudes, he sailed well south of Cape Hasewint, and did not turn north until he judged he had neared the longitude where Dirkzoon had turned back.
Thijssen had, in fact, gone further east than he intended, and by the time he sailed north he made landfall near the tip of what would come to be called Valk Land [Eyre Peninsula, South Australia]. He followed the coast until he reached the Mutjing city of Pankala, where he and his sailors were the first Europeans to contact a Gunnagalic people in their own land.
From here, Thijssen charted some of the coast, then crossed over to the Island, where he spent a few days at Crescent Bay before sailing on to Jugara on the mainland. Here, among many other accomplishments, he became the first Dutchman to visit the kingdom of Tjibarr, and the first to trade for a significant quantity of kunduri [6].
Due to warnings from both Tjibarr and the Islanders, he avoided any efforts to contact the Yadji. Instead, he sailed further south, where he explored much of the south and east coasts of an island which would later be named for him, although he called it New Holland [Tasmania]. Here, he became the first European to contact the Kurnawal, and the first to be utterly confused by attempts to translate their allusion-laden poetry.
In keeping with his orders, Thijssen sailed further east across a great expanse of sea, until he made landfall on the western coast of the southern island of Aotearoa [New Zealand]. The local Maori king ordered his sailors to depart or be killed, saying that they had no interest in visitors. Thijssen decided that combat was pointless, and withdrew. He sailed up the western coast of Aotearoa, meeting with similar hostility and sometimes violence whenever he made contact with the Maori kingdoms. So he confined himself to mapping the western coast of the two islands (although he believed they were a single island), and sailed north into the Pacific.
Thijssen's expedition went much further north, visiting Tonga before turning west, sailing north of New Guinea, and returning to Batavia in November 1627. Here, he had a wealth of tales which he planned to tell.
Unfortunately, the world had changed by then.
--
"Sire, Your Majesty finds yourself in a situation in which no part of your dominions is not under attack from your enemies, in league and conspiracy so extensive that one can without any exaggeration say that the whole of the rest of the world is turned against Your Majesty alone, in Asia, Africa and Europe."
- Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares to Philip IV of Spain (and Philip III of Portugal), 26 July 1625
--
[1] Strictly speaking, these Portuguese visitors would have been considered Spanish; those two countries had had a unified crown since 1580. Most of the trade in the East Indies was conducted by the Portuguese, though. At this point, Spain-Portugal and the Netherlands had a truce, and there was still some contact between traders on both sides. (The truce was due to expire in March 1621).
[2] The similar historical attack which happened a couple of weeks earlier was also successful, but one of the (few) casualties was the notable English explorer William Baffin. Baffin had made his name exploring the artic regions of North America, going further north than any before him while searching unsuccessfully for a passage to India. He had recently joined the East India Trading Company, and was present for the assault on Kishm, where he met an untimely end. With the allohistorical delay to the attack, Baffin survives.
[3] This is essentially the same outcome as happened historically, although the historical date for the fall of Hormuz was 22 April 1622.
[4] The progress of Pieter Dirkzoon's exploration is similar to that of the historical exploration of Francois Thijssen in the ship Gulden Zeepaerdt in 1627; he charted much of the southern coast of Australia but turned back when the coast started to stretch to the south-east. The islands which Dirkzoon discovered are in historical Australia still called the Nuyts Archipelago, which Thijssen named after a high-ranking passenger on his ship.
[5] Sweet peppers are what the Dutch call the various cultivars of pepperbushes that the Atjuntja cultivate (Tasmannia lanceolata). The berries of these plants are initially sweet, but with an intense peppery aftertaste. Per weight, they have about ten times the spiciness of common peppers, and they are developing into a profitable spice which the VOC exports to Europe.
[6] Some influential (or, perhaps, influenced) historians would argue that his establishment of trade in kunduri was more important than his contact with Tjibarr.
--
Thoughts?
"Portugal and Spain held the keys of the treasure house of the east and the west. But it was neither Portugal with her tiny population, and her empire that was little more than a line of forts and factories 10,000 miles long, nor Spain, for centuries an army on the march and now staggering beneath the responsibilities of her vast and scattered empire, devout to fanaticism, and with an incapacity for economic affairs which seemed almost inspired, which reaped the material harvest of the empires into which they had stepped, the one by patient toil, the other by luck. Gathering spoils which they could not retain, and amassing wealth which slipped through their fingers, they were little more than the political agents of minds more astute and characters better versed in the arts of peace... The economic capital of the new civilization was Antwerp... its typical figure, the paymaster of princes, was the international financier.
Convulsions of war and tides of religion unseated Antwerp from its commercial throne, the city besieged and its dissenting inhabitants dispersed. While force of arms might move borders, wealth migrated according to its own dictates, not the whims of princes. As the seventeenth century neared, international commerce continued in Amsterdam from where it had halted in Antwerp..."
- W H Stanhope, "Religion and the Birth of Capitalism"
--
Captain-General Frederik de Houtman's second voyage to Aururia was, for the Dutch, a shining success. A trade agreement had been negotiated, and a valuable collection of sample trade goods had been brought back to guide the Company's merchants in their pursuit of profit. Better yet, the expedition had brought back a host of information in charts, logs and journals to aid in the planning and conduct of further ventures.
The descendants of the Atjuntja and the other Aururian peoples would not have quite the same view of de Houtman's voyage. Of course, that was hardly something that concerned Governor-General Coen or the other senior officers of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. De Houtman and his fellow captains were showered with honours on their return.
Along with the honours, Jan Pieterszoon Coen gave the captains and their crews strict orders not to talk about their new discoveries. All had sworn oaths to the Company and to the United Netherlands, and those oaths had to be obeyed. They were to reveal nothing of this new South-Land, particularly about its wealth, and most particularly its location.
This order lasted about as long as it took the Dutch sailors to reach the nearest tavern.
The Dutch sailors did not intend to tell foreigners the secrets, exactly, but alcohol and secrets rarely go together. Mostly, they talked to other Dutchmen, who in turn repeated rumours to other compatriots. The taverns of Batavia were not the exclusive preserve of Dutchmen; apart from the local Javanese, this was a trading post sometimes visited by Englishmen, and occasionally by the Portuguese [1].
The Dutch sailors did not give detailed directions, but, inevitably, they talked. Within a few months, the Javanese, English and Portuguese knew that the VOC had discovered some fantastical new land somewhere to the south. Or was it to the east? Rumours spread, no two of them the same, about where this new land was and what it contained. The stories spread to Timor, to Malaya, to Surat, and in time to London, Lisbon and Madrid...
--
With the prestige secured from his second voyage, de Houtman successfully manoeuvred for command of the third expedition to the South-Land. He obtained appointment to the task of negotiating for the construction of the first Dutch outpost on the South-Land, and overseeing the first trade conducted there.
De Houtman set about his new task with enthusiasm. With a fresh fleet of ships loaded with carefully-chosen supplies, he returned to the South-Land in 1621 to establish a trading post. His chosen site was familiar from two previous visits: the Swan River. Given that he had already secured the permission of the King of Kings, it did not take long for de Houtman to negotiate the local governor's agreement to set up his new trading outpost.
De Houtman had chosen a site on the south bank at the mouth of the Swan River, at a distance he thought was about fifteen miles from the local garrison-city. He optimistically called the site Fort Nassau [Fremantle], even though his trade treaty stated – and the governor had reiterated – that no fortifications were to be built. His sailors were set to the task of constructing houses and other key dwellings. De Houtman used a few judiciously-chosen gifts to obtain the assistance of some local labourers to speed the process. Fort Nassau was developed into a useable state and declared open after three months, although completing some stone buildings would take over another year.
Atjuntja nobles and merchants (often the same people) had already started to gather before Fort Nassau officially opened. The samples of Dutch trade goods the previous year had attracted a great deal of interest, and de Houtman assured all arrivals that they would be given the opportunity to bargain for similar goods. De Houtman had always been an astute bargainer, and he was in a particularly favourable situation here. In most cases, the Atjuntja merchants bid against each other to obtain the most favoured goods.
Even with his previous experience of the White City, he was surprised by some of the priorities they set. The most highly-prized items were anything which showed great craftsmanship; lacquered goods, richly-decorated textiles, and the like. Steel ingots were worth half their weight in gold, and tin ingots only slightly less valued. Rum and brandy were held in similarly high esteem, especially after de Houtman's traders generously provided some free samples. Wine, though, they would not accept. Nor, despite his best efforts, could he persuade any Atjuntja to trade lead ingots for anything.
In exchange, de Houtman's trade ships were laden down with the commodities he had most desired. Gold and silver in abundance. Sandalwood in smaller quantities but, if anything, greater value. Dyes, especially their magnificent indigo. Considerable quantities of their mints and peppers and lesser spices, brought mostly to see if they could be resold for greater value. Yet despite his best efforts, he could not persuade any Atjuntja to offer kunduri at a price he would accept. Instead, he received many variations of responses which amounted to, "Kunduri is not something we trade, it is something we trade for."
Still, after de Houtman concluding his trading, he had the ebullient feeling that he had accomplished as much here as in his previous voyage. He left Fort Nassau in the command of a junior officer, and sailed for Batavia. There, he received another hero's welcome. As de Houtman had expected, Coen was well-pleased with him.
Unfortunately, Coen would not stay pleased for long.
--
With trade expanding between Batavia and the South-Land, the rumours of newfound Dutch wealth spread ever further. They caused some consternation in London, where the governor and directors of the East India Trading Company had been considering a delicate situation.
An opportunity had arisen in the Middle East, where Persia had declared war on Spain, and was besieging the Spanish garrison on the island of Kishm, near the vital Spanish-held island of Hormuz. That port had been in Portuguese and then Spanish hands for nearly a century, and offered a gateway to Persia. The Persian commanders had requested English help in capturing Kishm and then Hormuz, and had offered to allow English merchants entry into the valuable silk trade.
Alas, opportunity was balanced by danger, namely, the risk of outright war with Spain. England and Spain had been at peace for nearly two decades, and the Company might find that its pursuit of profit in the Gulf would cause a broader war. The heads of the Company were minded to ignore that risk, trusting to Providence and the good offices of King James I to ensure peace was preserved.
However, now the governor and directors had a new risk to consider: the rising power of the Dutch, and more precisely that of the VOC. The two companies had been rivals in the East Indies for two decades, until they negotiated a recent truce. Now, if the VOC had found a spectacular new source of wealth, could they be trusted to hold to that truce? If not, perhaps it would be better to cooperate with Spain against the Dutch, rather than starting what could become two wars.
The directors considered this dilemma for a few days. In the end, they decided that the immediate opportunity was worthwhile. Trade with Persia would be a valuable new market. Besides, the Spanish were Catholics, and not to be trusted. So they accepted the proposed alliance with the Persians, and decided that they would deal with the consequences when they came.
The planned attack on Kishm Island went ahead two weeks later than originally planned. The English fleet bombarded the fort and quickly forced the Spanish garrison to surrender; the assault sustained very few casualties [2]. Bolstered by this success, the English and Persian forces conducted a joint operation against Hormuz, with the Persians attacking by land while the English scattered the Spanish fleet and bombarding the castle.
Hormuz surrendered on 7 May 1622, and the Persians took control of the island, while the Spanish retreated to a secondary outpost at Muscat. Honouring their agreement, all Christian prisoners were repatriated to England, and plans began for the exchange of English cloth for Persian silk. Spain was outraged, and the Company was forced to pay ten thousand pounds each to James I and the Duke of Buckingham in compensation for the efforts they went to in preserving peace [3].
--
Frederik de Houtman was an extraordinary man. An explorer, but also a self-promoter and liar. An astronomer and a visionary, recorder of constellations unknown and charter of lands unvisited by Europeans. A linguist who recorded the first European dictionary of the Malayan language, and an optimist who always trusted that fate would reward him. An opportunist with an eye for the main chance, but whose vision ultimately deserted him.
After his three voyages to the South-Land, de Houtman was eager to return to the Netherlands to describe in person what he had found. And, of course, to receive the adulation he believed he deserved for his discoveries.
Governor-General Coen willingly allowed de Houtman to return home, but was dismayed by what happened when the explorer made it to the Netherlands. De Houtman took the opportunity to describe his triumphs ad nauseum. He was careful enough to present his tales only to those who could be relied upon to keep the details secret: Company lords and officers, the Stadtholder, and other government officials.
Unfortunately, that was the limit of de Houtman's discretion. To hear him speak, a listener would believe that his actions alone had been responsible for the discovery of the South-Land. And that no-one else had the wit to recognise the opportunities. To add to his misdoings, de Houtman presented a magnificent golden neck-ring to Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel. This neck-ring was a prize which de Houtman had collected while in the South-Land, but he had retained it rather than giving it to the Company.
De Houtman's generous gift endeared him to the Stadtholder, but it enraged the Lords Seventeen. Combined with his ever more frequent self-promotion, it ensured that he would never be trusted by the Company again. De Houtman was denied any further commissions, and lived out the remainder of his life in Europe. While he died a rich man, he never again set foot on the South-Land.
--
As the years turned, despite de Houtman's departure, and regardless of the distant battles and manoeuvring in the Gulf, the Dutch were busy shipping goods to and from their newly-discovered land. A few outbound fleets from the Netherlands were ordered to stop at Fort Nassau on their way to Batavia, conducting trade with the Atjuntja merchants. Prices had fallen after the initial novelty – no longer did the Atjuntja value steel as half the worth of gold – but any Dutch ship which stopped to trade at Fort Nassau always left with more valuable cargo than when it arrived.
Fortunately for the Dutch, the Atjuntja and the rest of the world, the long shipping times meant that most diseases were not exchanged between the two peoples. Incubation periods were mostly too short; a disease would burn its way through a ship's crew either before it reached the South-Land, or before the departing ships made their next landfall at Batavia.
Not all diseases were contained by the ocean barrier, of course. The first venereal diseases had been left behind at Seal Point in 1620 when de Houtman's expedition visited there. Blue-sleep was an ever-present threat to Dutch sailors when they came ashore; many of them caught the illness. Yet this was a fast-burning disease; while many sailors fell ill and some died from it, it ran through a ship's crew before they reached the Indies.
The greatest threat awaiting the Dutch in the South-Land was the malady called the Waiting Death. No epidemic of Marnitja had swept through the Atjuntja lands in the last decade before the Dutch arrival, so they were safe, for now.
The isolation of the seas would not last, of course. Eventually an asymptomatic carrier would make the journey, or a fast ship would carry disease to a new shore. If nothing else, some maladies would linger in blankets or textiles and bring Eurasian diseases to the South-Land, or Aururian diseases to the Old World, but that time was not yet.
--
While the Company officers were glad of the profitable trade they had found at Fort Nassau, they were eager to discover more. The first visit to the White City had told them that the Islanders lived far to the east, but not the details of how to travel there.
So a few of their officers did some exploration by land along the Atjuntja road network. That was tolerated, up to a point, provided that they did not attempt to trade. Yet they were always watched, and discouraged most strongly from coming by land to the White City or any other place where they might encounter Islander traders. The King of Kings did not wish his two trading partners to contact each other directly, realising full well the problems that this would bring for the carefully controlled Atjuntja internal trade and tribute networks.
Thus, the Dutch land explorations gave them some grasp of the geography of the Atjuntja dominions, but did not let them explore any further trade. Some inland regions were also expressly off limits, such as the vicinity of Star Hill or the main gold mines at Golden Blood. To build new trade networks, they would have to venture along the seas.
In 1622, Governor-General Coen ordered the first voyage be sent to explore past the Atjuntja dominions in pursuit of new trade markets. Pieter Dirkzoon was named captain of the Leeuwin, with the yacht Nijptang accompanying, and given orders to explore the southern coast of the South-Land. He was instructed to explore east past the White City, in the hope of reaching the Islander homeland and determining whether it was worthwhile establishing direct trade with this barely-known people.
Mindful of the Atjuntja watchfulness, Dirkzoon led his two ships from Batavia to Fort Nassau, where they resupplied before steering well south of Cape Hasewint [Cape Leeuwin]. His ships stayed out at sea until they had passed what they judged to be the easternmost Atjuntja dominion, Red Eye, then turned north.
As it happened, Dirkzoon was correct in his navigation, and he brought his ships close to the shore at what were no longer Ajuntja lands.
Unfortunately, these lands were uninhabited for good reason. The endless westerly winds gave the Dutch ships great speed, but the coast they faced was the bleakest that any of them had ever seen or heard of. This barren stretch of coast consisted of seemingly-endless sea cliffs, imposing bulwarks of stone which reached 300 feet high or more, stretching from horizon to everlasting horizon. Above the cliff-tops was nothing at all but featureless emptiness; no trees, no rivers emptying, nothing but hundreds of miles of unwelcoming hostility.
The coast was ever-intimidating, never approachable. Besides the fierce winds pushing them against the cliffs, the seas themselves were a threat. Immense wind-driven swells broke endlessly upon the sea-cliffs, slowly eroding their bases, with force that would shatter even the largest ship to driftwood and splinters in an instant.
In an unusual display of originality, since new lands were normally named after high-ranking Company officers, Dirkzoon christened this endless barrenness as Kust van de Nachtmerrie [Nightmare Coast].
With such an unwelcoming and dangerous coast, Dirkzoon could not keep his ships constantly in sight of the shoreline. To do so risked disaster, since a gust of wind or more than usually potent set of swells would destroy his ships in a heartbeat. Thus, while he maintained enough sightings of the cliffs to know that they continued, he missed the one small break in the cliffs which marked a lonely Islander settlement that the locals so aptly christened in their own language as Isolation.
Dirkzoon kept on, doggedly persistent, until his expedition reached a point where the sea cliffs turned to the south-east. This was the worst possible direction, since it would force the ships ever further away from Batavia. His orders had anticipated sailing around the South-Land and back up to tropical latitudes, where he could return to Batavia in relative safety.
Alas, he now faced seemingly endless sea-cliffs stretching away in the wrong direction. For all Dirkzoon knew, the bleakly featureless cliffs stretched all the way to the South Pole. While he knew that the Islanders lived here somewhere, he did not know how far, or how friendly they would be. With dwindling supplies, hostile seas, and the prospect of a very slow voyage back west against the wind, he was minded to turn back.
Decision time came when the two ships reached a couple of small islands off the coast. The seas calmed enough to allow a few boats to venture ashore and confirm that these islands were uninhabited. The sailors replenished their supplies of fresh water from the islands, but otherwise found that these isolated rocky outposts had nothing to commend them.
While Dirkzoon's ships lingered at these two islands, a rare shift in the wind saw the breeze come from the east. This fortunate change was enough to convince Dirkzoon to turn back; he might not get another such opportunity. So he ended his exploration and brought his two ships back to Batavia, where he provided them with charts and descriptions of bleakness, but not the new trading markets which Coen had sought [4].
--
With the failure of Dirkzoon's 1622 expedition, Coen and the VOC decided to focus other priorities, rather than further exploration. War had broken out with Spain-Portugal in 1621. The Company concentrated its efforts on protecting its Far Eastern holdings and seizing other places of known value, rather than diverting valuable ships for another costly, challenging, and probably fruitless expedition. Instead, in accordance with their treaty, they built a second trading post near the Atjuntja garrison-city of Seal Point, which they called Fort Zeelandia. Being nearer to the salt-harvesting regions, this new outpost saw greater trading in salt, but otherwise its goods were similar to Fort Nassau.
Coen knew that the South-Land contained other nations and markets. However, he had also learned that gold and sandalwood, the most valuable goods of the South-Land, were what the Islanders came to Atjuntja lands to trade for. They would not find these goods if they ventured further east. The only known trade goods from further east were kunduri and gum cider. Gum cider was of little value to the Company. Kunduri was spoiled in Coen's eyes for another reason: when he had first tried smoking it, he had inhaled so much of the stronger substance that it had caused him to vomit. He had refused to try kunduri again, and decided that it was worthless. While some other Company officers had sampled the drug and now savoured it, Coen was too stubborn to change his mind.
Thus, over the next four years, Coen ordered that Company ships focus on the known rewards of gold, sandalwood and sweet peppers [5]. This provided valuable capital for supporting Company activities elsewhere in the Orient, particularly for building new ships and recruiting mercenaries for garrisons and raids. The wealth of Asia beckoned; Coen hoped to monopolise shipping between the nations. The commodities of the South-Land were merely building blocks in the corporate edifice he wanted to construct.
The Company only decided to change its policy when it received direct word from the Islanders. In late 1625, a Nangu trading captain named Yuma Tjula discreetly arranged for some Djarwari labourers returning to their homeland to pass on an invitation to the commander of Fort Nassau. This gave the Dutch enough of a description of the southern coast of the South-Land to know how to sail to Islander-held territory.
With this inspiration, the Lords Seventeen commissioned a new expedition of discovery. They sent three ships, under the command of François Thijssen in the Valk, to make contact with the Islanders. Unlike his predecessor, Thijssen was given explicit orders to explore further east, to find a way around the expected edge of the South-Land and return to Batavia by a more northerly route.
So, in 1626 and 1627, François Thijssen commanded an expedition which some would later claim to make him the greatest European explorer of Aururia. Even those who did not give him that rank placed him a close second behind Frederik de Houtman.
Thijssen did not visit set out from Fort Nassau as his predecessor had done, but came directly from Europe via Mauritius. Knowing that the winds were more reliable in higher latitudes, he sailed well south of Cape Hasewint, and did not turn north until he judged he had neared the longitude where Dirkzoon had turned back.
Thijssen had, in fact, gone further east than he intended, and by the time he sailed north he made landfall near the tip of what would come to be called Valk Land [Eyre Peninsula, South Australia]. He followed the coast until he reached the Mutjing city of Pankala, where he and his sailors were the first Europeans to contact a Gunnagalic people in their own land.
From here, Thijssen charted some of the coast, then crossed over to the Island, where he spent a few days at Crescent Bay before sailing on to Jugara on the mainland. Here, among many other accomplishments, he became the first Dutchman to visit the kingdom of Tjibarr, and the first to trade for a significant quantity of kunduri [6].
Due to warnings from both Tjibarr and the Islanders, he avoided any efforts to contact the Yadji. Instead, he sailed further south, where he explored much of the south and east coasts of an island which would later be named for him, although he called it New Holland [Tasmania]. Here, he became the first European to contact the Kurnawal, and the first to be utterly confused by attempts to translate their allusion-laden poetry.
In keeping with his orders, Thijssen sailed further east across a great expanse of sea, until he made landfall on the western coast of the southern island of Aotearoa [New Zealand]. The local Maori king ordered his sailors to depart or be killed, saying that they had no interest in visitors. Thijssen decided that combat was pointless, and withdrew. He sailed up the western coast of Aotearoa, meeting with similar hostility and sometimes violence whenever he made contact with the Maori kingdoms. So he confined himself to mapping the western coast of the two islands (although he believed they were a single island), and sailed north into the Pacific.
Thijssen's expedition went much further north, visiting Tonga before turning west, sailing north of New Guinea, and returning to Batavia in November 1627. Here, he had a wealth of tales which he planned to tell.
Unfortunately, the world had changed by then.
--
"Sire, Your Majesty finds yourself in a situation in which no part of your dominions is not under attack from your enemies, in league and conspiracy so extensive that one can without any exaggeration say that the whole of the rest of the world is turned against Your Majesty alone, in Asia, Africa and Europe."
- Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares to Philip IV of Spain (and Philip III of Portugal), 26 July 1625
--
[1] Strictly speaking, these Portuguese visitors would have been considered Spanish; those two countries had had a unified crown since 1580. Most of the trade in the East Indies was conducted by the Portuguese, though. At this point, Spain-Portugal and the Netherlands had a truce, and there was still some contact between traders on both sides. (The truce was due to expire in March 1621).
[2] The similar historical attack which happened a couple of weeks earlier was also successful, but one of the (few) casualties was the notable English explorer William Baffin. Baffin had made his name exploring the artic regions of North America, going further north than any before him while searching unsuccessfully for a passage to India. He had recently joined the East India Trading Company, and was present for the assault on Kishm, where he met an untimely end. With the allohistorical delay to the attack, Baffin survives.
[3] This is essentially the same outcome as happened historically, although the historical date for the fall of Hormuz was 22 April 1622.
[4] The progress of Pieter Dirkzoon's exploration is similar to that of the historical exploration of Francois Thijssen in the ship Gulden Zeepaerdt in 1627; he charted much of the southern coast of Australia but turned back when the coast started to stretch to the south-east. The islands which Dirkzoon discovered are in historical Australia still called the Nuyts Archipelago, which Thijssen named after a high-ranking passenger on his ship.
[5] Sweet peppers are what the Dutch call the various cultivars of pepperbushes that the Atjuntja cultivate (Tasmannia lanceolata). The berries of these plants are initially sweet, but with an intense peppery aftertaste. Per weight, they have about ten times the spiciness of common peppers, and they are developing into a profitable spice which the VOC exports to Europe.
[6] Some influential (or, perhaps, influenced) historians would argue that his establishment of trade in kunduri was more important than his contact with Tjibarr.
--
Thoughts?
As always this was a very interesting and evocative piece, kudos!
You handled the shifts in time extremely well, with enough detail to be informative and entertaining while not lingering too long or leaving it feeling like we missed too much.
I imagine if I were more of a historical scholar I could appreciate it all better, but I still found myself very engaged and the outsider details about other factions, politics and companies was extremely well done, as were the ripple effects on the rest of the world.
The benefits and fallout's of De Houtman's first and second voyages all felt very believable and human.
All in all a very cool and intriguing piece that was a joy to read, thanks for sharing!
I wonder if Australia has the right materials for locals to produce black powder by themselves?
You handled the shifts in time extremely well, with enough detail to be informative and entertaining while not lingering too long or leaving it feeling like we missed too much.
I imagine if I were more of a historical scholar I could appreciate it all better, but I still found myself very engaged and the outsider details about other factions, politics and companies was extremely well done, as were the ripple effects on the rest of the world.
The benefits and fallout's of De Houtman's first and second voyages all felt very believable and human.
All in all a very cool and intriguing piece that was a joy to read, thanks for sharing!
I wonder if Australia has the right materials for locals to produce black powder by themselves?
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ominous.
Good to hear it made sense. I've tried deliberately to make most of this timeline accessible to people even who know little about history. (Which is me on most parts of history, but I digress). There are a couple of chapters which are probably difficult to follow without knowing something of the history of the period, but these are ones which are exploring particular other parts of the world, mostly Europe, and the changes there. These chapters can be easily skipped without missing much of consequence for the main focus of this timeline, i.e. the changed circumstances in alt-Australia and (to a lesser degree) alt-New Zealand.
Well, kinda. Australia is unique amongst inhabited continents that it has no known reserves of elemental sulphur at all. There is a little elemental sulphur on some of the islands off eastern New Guinea (I forget which ones offhand), but only a small amount, and not very accessible. However, to peoples with the right technology, sulphur is produced as a by-product of iron mining, when it is extracted from iron sulphide (and to a degree, from other mining too). This can be managed for some peoples with the iron sulphide deposits and who have (or who can learn) to extract it.
Charcoal, well, Aururians produce the finest charcoal in the world at this stage. It's something which they can do because they have access to blue gums and other related eucalypts, which make for extremely efficient, renewable charcoal production. (Basically plant the trees, come back in ten years, clear fell the now very tall trees and turn them to charcoal. Leave the land as it is, the trees regrow on their own, then just keep coming back every ten years.)
Saltpetre, they don't quite know how to produce, but could learn to do so from emu manure if they have some guidance or time to experiment. Eurasian domesticated mammals would be better for that purpose, though.
For the crucial ingredient, saltpetre, European manufacturers are not the main competition. Indian saltpetre was far cheaper than any European products during this period (the advantage of considering cows to be sacred). This does require either European sellers or some Aururians to work out how to sail to India themselves, but at least it offers a potential option.
Why, yes. Yes, it is. This would probably not be the moment to mention the title of the next chapter., The Gates of Tartarus.
I think you have done a solid job, the exposition worked well and made sense, giving me all the info I needed to understand the current situation, thanks!
I see, very informative and well thought out, thanks!
Also dang, was hoping they'd make guns, maybe flamethrowers are an option XD
Oh dear.
Lands of Red and Gold #25: The Gates of Tartarus
Lands of Red and Gold #25: The Gates of Tartarus
"And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth..."
- Revelation 6:8
--
Infectious diseases are the greatest killers of humanity throughout history. In war and in peace, diverse infestations of diseases have ravaged the world's population time and again. Effective treatments have been rare until the last couple of centuries of human history, and even today many diseases can only be prevented, not cured.
Yet, as is well-known, while epidemic diseases can kill humans wherever on the globe they may live, the diseases themselves did not originate from all parts of the world. The Old World had more than a dozen major killers which were transported along with Old Worlders to the other continents and islands, but the rest of the world did not have any major killers awaiting Old Worlders when they arrived [1].
So, as Europeans reached other parts of the world, they brought a host of diseases with them. Smallpox, measles, typhus and influenza are usually considered the deadliest killers, but malaria, yellow fever, tuberculosis, whooping cough, diphtheria, plague, mumps, typhoid, chickenpox, rubella, and other diseases were also major scourges.
Look into the depths of allohistory, however, and this exchange of diseases was not always one-way. In the continent which history calls Australia, and allohistory calls Aururia, the inhabitants have long suffered from a variety of diseases. Many of these are minor, non-fatal, or otherwise constrained by geographical and biological factors to the continent itself. Still, the Aururian continent holds three diseases with the potential to become worldwide killers: blue-sleep, swamp rash, and Marnitja.
Blue-sleep is a form of avian influenza, which originated from migrating birds that travel between Aururia and parts of Asia and Europe. Like all forms of influenza, it is airborne, highly contagious, and mutates rapidly, making long-term immunity impossible, although people who have survived a previous infection are unlikely to die from a re-infection. Infected victims quickly experience fatigue and have their faces and lips turn blue, but in other respects the disease is similar to common influenza.
Being derived from avian influenza, blue-sleep has extreme potential to turn into a pandemic. The worst influenza pandemics in both history and allohistory originated from avian derived forms of influenza, and blue-sleep is no exception. The historical Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 is estimated to have killed about 5% of the global population, and blue-sleep has a similarly lethal potential.
Blue-sleep is infectious and common enough that it afflicted Dutch visitors as early as de Houtman's second expedition to Aururia. Fortunately for the rest of the world, blue-sleep spread very rapidly amongst ship crews, and the main Dutch trading post at Fort Nassau was a considerable sailing time from the next port of call at Batavia. This meant that while Dutch sailors regularly caught blue-sleep, transmission of the virus across the oceans was much more difficult.
Swamp rash is a mosquito-borne virus which evolved from the historical Barmah Forest virus. It produces chills, fever, fatigue, swollen joints, and a blistery rash which spreads over most of the body. While most of the victims recover, in some cases the infection enters the lymphatic system, leading to painfully swollen lymph nodes and eventual death.
Swamp rash is not a continent-wide disease. The virus is mostly confined to the artificial wetlands in the Nyalananga [Murray] basin, although it has recently spread to the wetlands in the western regions of the Yadji lands [south-western Victoria]. For it to spread further, however, is unlikely. The mosquitoes which carry swamp rash are short-lived species, and the birds which are its other natural hosts do not migrate beyond the continent. While it would not be impossible for the virus to spread overseas, it would be unlikely.
The mortality rate of swamp rash varies. The Gunnagal who live along the Nyalananga itself have evolved some natural resistance to the virus, and so their mortality rate is only about 5% for children and less for adults. For visitors from elsewhere in the continent, or overseas, the mortality rate is about 10% for adults, and worse for children.
Of all of the afflictions found on the Aururian continent, however, none is deadlier than what the locals call the Waiting Death: Marnitja, in the Gunnagal language. Marnitja is an allohistorical henipavirus, related to the historical Hendra and Nipah viruses, and more distantly to measles and mumps. Marnitja originated as a bat-borne virus which spread via domesticated dingos and ultimately evolved into an exclusively human epidemic.
People infected with Marnitja show a distinctive two-stage set of symptoms. The first stage is a haemorrhagic infection of the lungs called the "pink cough," where the fevered victims experience severe coughing and other breathing difficulties. They also suffer from fatigue, fever, and sometimes blood loss and renal failure. Some survivors of the pink cough have life-long breathing problems.
Survivors of the pink cough, however, are not yet free of Marnitja. While they are no longer infectious, they may still be afflicted with the second stage of the virus. This is a form of encephalitis, an infection of their central nervous system which leads to fever, seizures, delirium and almost inevitable death. Survivors of the pink cough have to endure an interminable wait to find out whether they will succumb to the delirium; the usual period is two to three months, but on rare occasions it can take as long as three years [2]. This lingering period of uncertainty is what led the survivors to christen the disease the Waiting Death.
The fatality rate of Marnitja varies considerably, depending on a population's previous exposure to this virus or to infectious diseases in general. Amongst the Aururian peoples, each epidemic usually kills less than 5% of the population. For Eurasian peoples, the virus would kill anywhere between 10-15% of the population, depending on their nutritional levels and general health. For peoples with insufficient exposure to epidemic diseases – which in the early seventeenth century includes of the New World – the fatality rate is likely to be in excess of 20% of the population.
Given the shipping times between Aururia and the East Indies, Marnitja is also unlikely to be transmitted by direct infection. However, one of the distinctive features of Marnitja is that it produces a relatively high proportion (up to 0.5%) of asymptomatic carriers. Anyone who becomes an asymptomatic carrier will be infectious for life, and it will only take one such person to travel from Aururia to the rest of the world for Marnitja to become a global problem.
--
The first European exposure to Marnitja was in April 1625, when a Dutch trading fleet arrived in Fort Nassau [Perth] after sailing from the Netherlands. The Waiting Death burned through the ships Dordrecht and Sardam as they sailed to Batavia, but the pink cough had run its course before the ships reached the East Indies. While some of the sailors would later die in a fevered delirium, by this stage they were no longer infectious. One of their Yaora mistresses recognised the Waiting Death and described it to the Dutch, but they did not pay it much heed. They treated this malady as simply one more in a long list of tropical diseases which often struck Europeans who visited the Spice Islands.
They would soon learn the gravity of their mistake.
Centuries later, a collaboration of three authors – an epidemiologist, a linguist, and a historian – would trace the path of the first Marnitja epidemic as it burned across the globe. Their efforts were dedicated, their report exhaustive, and it would eventually be published in three languages on as many continents.
This report marked the authors as the first to accomplish many things. They were the first to trace the oldest references to the virus. They were the first to recommend the application of what would become the near-universal name for the disease (Marnitja), replacing the host of appellations which the disease had carried before that: the Dutch curse, the dying cough, the sweating sleep, the unholy death, and many more.
What these authors were not the first to do was discover the name of the first Dutch asymptomatic carrier who carried the disease to the world. History would never record that name. Yet these authors gave this carrier a name anyway: Patient Zero.
The authors discovered that Patient Zero was a sailor aboard the Dutch merchant ship Vliegende Hollander, which landed at Fort Nassau on 15 October 1626. Several sailors caught Marnitja on this visit, and many of them died from it. As before, the Dutch assumed that this was another tropical malady, and after conducting normal trade, set sail for Batavia. The Vliegende Hollander was one of four ships in this trading fleet, but after its arrival, it was the only one to be reloaded with gold and spices for a quick return to the Netherlands, along with five other ships making the voyage home.
The authors presumed that Patient Zero stayed on the Vliegende Hollander for most of the unloading and reloading, for there is no record that Marnitja spread from him to anyone in Batavia. The Vliegende Hollander and its fellow ships sailed west with the November monsoons. While crossing the Indian Ocean, the Vliegende Hollander became damaged in a storm, and had to put ashore on the eastern coast of Madagascar for repairs. Relations with the locals were peaceable enough after the captain provided a few gifts, and the repairs were effected over the next few weeks. The Vliegende Hollander departed the island for Amsterdam, some time behind its fellow ships. However, it left a legacy behind.
Madagascar became the first region of the Old World to know the scourge of Marnitja. In 1627, the affliction burned its way across the island, earning it the name of "burning lungs." It left behind a legacy of fevered, coughing victims, survivors with breathing difficulties, and other survivors who did not yet know the doom which awaited them.
The Mozambique Channel presented no barrier to an epidemic of the Waiting Death. Madagascar had long been a hub of traders coming to and from East Africa; the Portuguese who had begun to establish colonies along the coast were only seeking to break into a much longer-established market. From Madagascar, trading vessels carried the new affliction near-simultaneously to the Portuguese outposts at the Island of Mozambique and Zanzibar.
Once established on the African mainland, Marnitja spread rapidly both north and south. It left a deadly passage as far south as the Cape, devastating the Bantu and Khoisan peoples of southern Africa. To the north, it spread more slowly, reaching Ethiopia in 1628 and then Egypt in 1629. Seaborne trade carried it to the Persian Gulf in 1628, striking first at Muscat, then spreading along both shores of the Gulf and into Persian lands.
Marnitja reached Mecca in time for the annual hajj in 1629. Among the victims were a few pilgrims who believed that they had been spared from the visitation of this new malady, when in fact they would be bearing the disease home with them. From Egypt, Mecca and Persia, the disease was poised to spread over the rest of the House of Islam. However, it did not spread much into Christian Europe, for by this time the Waiting Death had already reached that continent by another route.
From Ethiopia, Marnitja did not just spread north; it also burned its way west across the Sahel. In time, it devastated all of the West African peoples, including kingdoms such as Allada, Oyo and Kaabu. As well as the suffering inflicted on these regions by the disease itself, the first wave of Marnitja also struck the European slave-trading outposts in West Africa.
Unfortunately, this was not enough to destroy the slave trade entirely, not with sugar planters in Brazil and the Caribbean with a seemingly endless demand for more labour. In 1630, among the unfortunate slaves crammed into European trading vessels were three asymptomatic carriers, two bound for Brazil, the other for Hispaniola. From here, the disease spread rapidly throughout the Caribbean and Portuguese Brazil, and more slowly into Mesoamerica, through Central America, and down into Peru. All of the heavily-settled parts of New Spain were also struck by the virus. The main wave of infection burned out in the northern deserts of New Spain and did not penetrate into most of North America. However, over the next few years, secondary waves of infection struck the European colonies on the eastern seaboard, and spread to the neighbouring Amerindian peoples.
Europe itself first felt the Waiting Death thanks to Patient Zero. On 21 August 1627, the Vliegende Hollander sailed into Amsterdam, where its crew disembarked. One week later, the first Dutch men and women developed fevers and chills, followed quickly by a hacking cough which grew ever worse.
Two days later, Marnitja caused its first deaths on the European mainland. The first of uncountably many. Many prominent Dutchmen died, including Frederik de Houtman, the discoverer of the South-Land, who succumbed to the pink cough on 1 October 1627 [3]. Still, Frederick Henry, the Prince of Orange, survived the disease without any apparent ill effects.
At this time, Europe was nine years into a war which another history would call the Thirty Years War. The Dutch Republic was not involved in the main part of this struggle, although it had been at war with Spain-Portugal since 1621. Its neighbours were at the forefront of the fighting, though; the Holy Roman Empire was the key battleground, and Christian IV of Denmark had led his kingdom into the war two years earlier.
In 1628, Marnitja spread rapidly through war-ravaged Germany, killing both sides indiscriminately. Recognising where it had come from, if not the cause of the disease, the Germans referred to the epidemic as the Dutch curse. It was a curse which would kill many of their people in the days to come, including several of the leading political and military figures of the day.
Like so many of his subjects, Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was afflicted by a severe bout of the pink cough. While he survived, he was gravely weakened, with breathing difficulties which would persist for the remainder of his truncated life. Left more vulnerable to other infections, he would succumb to pneumonia in 1631 [4].
The Catholic forces had two leading generals at this time. One, Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, died in a fevered delirium in February 1628. The other, Albrecht von Wallenstein, also caught the Dutch curse but escaped with only mild symptoms. However, the deaths and disruption caused by the disease meant that he had to abandon his plans for a siege of Straslund, the last holdout Protestant port on the southern Baltic coast.
On the Protestant side, the most prominent casualty of the Dutch curse was John George I, Elector of Saxony. Christian IV of Denmark survived, although he lost several of his children, including Prince Frederick [who would later have become King Frederick III]. His designated heir, Christian, survived Marnitja but experienced severe scarring of his lungs, which would later shorten Christian's life.
Most other major Protestant rulers survived, although Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia was permanently invalided by breathing problems caused by the pink cough. The effective governance of his state passed to his Catholic chancellor, Adam, Count of Schwarzenberg.
The Dutch curse could not, of course, be confined to the combatants in what would now not be called the Thirty Years War. It crossed the Rhine and swept into France around the same time as it was ravaging Germany. Here, Cardinal Richelieu had taken personal command of the royal armies besieging the Huguenots in La Rochelle. In April 1628 he died coughing up blood, and the Dutch curse took so many soldiers with him that the government forces abandoned the siege. The epidemic spread from here into Spain, where it took a heavy toll of the population, including several prominent nobles, although Felipe IV survived.
The Dutch curse spread eastward and southward from the Holy Roman Empire. In 1629, Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy, became one of the rarest of survivors, one who suffered but survived the delirium of the Waiting Death. Unfortunately, it left him with severe paralysis and impaired speech. His Francophile wife Christine Marie, the Duchess consort, was then pregnant with the future Louise Christine, and became the de facto regent of Savoy. Further south in Rome, Pope Urban VIII survived the curse, although several of his most prominent cardinals did not.
In its eastward spread, the Dutch curse cut a deadly path through Poland-Lithuania; the monarch Zygmunt III survived, but lost one of his sons, Aleksander Karol. The disease spread on into Muscovy, as well as passing south into the Ottoman-ruled Balkans. Sultan Murad IV survived without apparently even catching the disease, although it struck his court. The most prominent casualty in the Sublime Porte was the Grand Vizier, Gazi Ekrem Hüsrev Pasha. From here, it combined with the other wave of infection coming through Persia and Arabia, and burned its way across the length and breadth of Asia.
One final tendril of infection went north from Lithuania into Swedish-ruled Estonia, and thence into peninsular Sweden in 1630. This was a secondary wave of infection, since the disease had already entered Sweden from Denmark in 1628. However, among those who had not caught Marnitja during the first wave was the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus. He caught the pink cough in May 1630, and survived. By this time, though, word from the Netherlands (via several Aururian mistresses) meant that the Swedish monarch knew that he still needed to wait to see whether the delirium would take him. He might succumb in any time up to three years.
Gustavus Adolphus decided that if he did die, he would leave a legacy worth remembering.
--
Blue-sleep took longer to expand its deadly reach out of Aururia. Confined by sailing times from their trading posts, no early Dutch ship would bring the disease back to the Indies.
However, the Dutch were not the only early explorers of Aururia.
Portugal and England knew of the Dutch discovery of a new land near the Indies; word had not taken long to spread. However, the VOC had been assiduous in restricting knowledge of charts and other important navigational details, so other nations were not sure exactly where this new land could be found, or how to navigate it safely. England soon found other concerns besides the distant rumour of gold, but Portugal had a greater presence in the Indies. And, due to a combination of religious concerns and an ongoing war with the Dutch, a greater motivation to explore these new lands.
Father António de Andrade was a distinguished Portuguese Jesuit who had spent two and a half decades as the Society of Jesus' chief missionary in the Indies. He had been recalled to Goa in 1624, but he retained an interest in affairs in the Indies. With ever-growing rumours of the new land which the Dutch had discovered, he decided to return there and explore this new land to see whether he could spread the Word of God to the new peoples.
De Andrade returned to Flores in the Indies in 1629 along with his brother, Manuel Marques, and arranged for a ship to be sent to explore these new lands. Under de Andrade's guidance, the ship sailed to the south-east and explored part of the South-Land. They called this region Costa Problematica [Troublesome Coast], for what they found was a barren, forbidding land, with the natives being very reluctant to approach. De Andrade persisted, and had some brief encounters with some of the natives, but was unable to induce any of the natives to return to Flores on board the Portuguese ship.
De Andrade's visit marked the first Portuguese exploration of Aururia. It failed in terms of direct conversion, but he had always known that was unlikely on a first visit. The expedition did develop some useful charts of parts of the new land. Unfortunately, the sailing times were quick enough that it also brought back something else with it: blue-sleep. A sailor had caught the disease during one of the meetings with the Aururians, and it spread amongst the crew on the voyage back to Flores. Several of the sailors were still infectious when it reached the Portuguese colony.
Once a disease such as blue-sleep was established in the Indies, it inevitably spread. Airborne, easily transmissible and often lethal, blue-sleep followed the trade routes throughout the Indies and onto the Asian mainland. From here, it burned across the length of Asia and on into Africa and Europe.
Blue-sleep ravaged Europe in 1631-2. While the overall toll from this disease was lower than that of Marnitja, the greatest proportion of the deaths was among young adults [5]. This meant that it killed many young men of military age, which had considerable effects on the armies then fighting across much of the continent.
The disease took its toll of prominent members of European society, too. Perhaps the most notable victim was Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland. His death left his infant son Charles II as nominal sovereign and his dominions to be governed by an uncertain regency, with the claimants including George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham [6] and Thomas Wentworth.
In Poland-Lithuania, King Zygmunt III still survived, but the royal family lost another prominent member. The most prominent prince, Wladyslaw [who would have become King Wladyslaw IV in 1632] succumbed to blue-sleep.
The Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg suffered a severe toll due to an unfortunate confluence of timing; the children of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, and many of the other leading members of the House, were at the most vulnerable age. Ferdinand III had only succeeded his father for six weeks when he succumbed to blue-sleep on 18 October 1631. His only brother, Archduke Leopold, had died two weeks before, leaving no direct male heirs. He had only two surviving sisters, and one of them, Cecilia Renata, died in early November.
Worse, there were now no suitably-aged close male relatives amongst the Austrian Habsburgs. The closest male-line relative was the three-year-old Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Further Austria, and cousin of Ferdinand III. Ferdinand Charles had himself been born posthumously; his mother had been pregnant when his father Leopold, the old Emperor's last surviving brother [7] had died from the Dutch curse in April 1628.
The only other alternative was to find a husband for the last surviving daughter of Ferdinand II: Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria. She was reportedly intelligent, stern, driven, opinionated – and an extremely attractive political prize. The intrigues started before Ferdinand III's body had a chance to grow cold...
--
The seventeenth century was already a time of global upheaval. The European powers had begun their assault on the globe which would see them establish colonial control over most of the world's surface in the next few centuries. The deepening climatic effects of the Little Ice Age brought famine and other agricultural problems to much of the planet.
The Americas were in the midst of the greatest population replacement of the modern era. Japan was nearing the time when it would have chosen to close itself off from all but carefully regulated contact with the rest of the world. In China, the worsening climatic conditions brought about social unrest which would have led to the collapse of the native Ming Dynasty and its replacement by the foreign Manchu. In Europe itself, the continent convulsed as old political and religious certainties crumbled.
In these volatile times, the twin waves of Aururian epidemics could only add to the upheaval. Collectively, they killed 19% of the global population - over 100 million people - and their effects did not stop there. Marnitja, in particular, would recur every generation and depress the global population growth rate for centuries. The world which followed would be an emptier place.
More, the deaths and devastation had inevitable effects on the world's psyche. A new age had dawned, or so some later historians would say, when describing the changing attitudes to religion, to labour, and to social and political institutions.
Of course, some of those historians would argue that, for all of the death and upheaval which Aururian diseases caused, that this was not the greatest effect which the discovery of Aururia would have on the rest of the world.
[1] Apart from maybe syphilis, but there's not yet been a definitive answer on whether that disease was from the Old World, the New World, or a fusion of the two.
[2] This waiting period is mirrored in the historical counterparts to Marnitja, named Hendra virus and Nipah virus. For those viruses, in some cases those diseases have taken over 4 years for the viral encephalitis to appear.
[3] This did not, in fact, shorten de Houtman's life by very much; in real history he died only a few weeks later.
[4] In real history, Ferdinand died in 1637.
[5] In this regard, blue-sleep is much like a historical avian-derived influenza virus, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. That disease, too, was most deadly for young adults.
[6] Historically, Buckingham was assassinated in August 1628 by a disgruntled soldier; here, the dislocation of diseases means that he was not in the vicinity of his would-be assassin, and so survives for the time being.
[7] Yes, another Leopold. Like many European royal families, the Habsburgs had a habit of recycling names.
--
Thoughts?
"And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth..."
- Revelation 6:8
--
Infectious diseases are the greatest killers of humanity throughout history. In war and in peace, diverse infestations of diseases have ravaged the world's population time and again. Effective treatments have been rare until the last couple of centuries of human history, and even today many diseases can only be prevented, not cured.
Yet, as is well-known, while epidemic diseases can kill humans wherever on the globe they may live, the diseases themselves did not originate from all parts of the world. The Old World had more than a dozen major killers which were transported along with Old Worlders to the other continents and islands, but the rest of the world did not have any major killers awaiting Old Worlders when they arrived [1].
So, as Europeans reached other parts of the world, they brought a host of diseases with them. Smallpox, measles, typhus and influenza are usually considered the deadliest killers, but malaria, yellow fever, tuberculosis, whooping cough, diphtheria, plague, mumps, typhoid, chickenpox, rubella, and other diseases were also major scourges.
Look into the depths of allohistory, however, and this exchange of diseases was not always one-way. In the continent which history calls Australia, and allohistory calls Aururia, the inhabitants have long suffered from a variety of diseases. Many of these are minor, non-fatal, or otherwise constrained by geographical and biological factors to the continent itself. Still, the Aururian continent holds three diseases with the potential to become worldwide killers: blue-sleep, swamp rash, and Marnitja.
Blue-sleep is a form of avian influenza, which originated from migrating birds that travel between Aururia and parts of Asia and Europe. Like all forms of influenza, it is airborne, highly contagious, and mutates rapidly, making long-term immunity impossible, although people who have survived a previous infection are unlikely to die from a re-infection. Infected victims quickly experience fatigue and have their faces and lips turn blue, but in other respects the disease is similar to common influenza.
Being derived from avian influenza, blue-sleep has extreme potential to turn into a pandemic. The worst influenza pandemics in both history and allohistory originated from avian derived forms of influenza, and blue-sleep is no exception. The historical Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 is estimated to have killed about 5% of the global population, and blue-sleep has a similarly lethal potential.
Blue-sleep is infectious and common enough that it afflicted Dutch visitors as early as de Houtman's second expedition to Aururia. Fortunately for the rest of the world, blue-sleep spread very rapidly amongst ship crews, and the main Dutch trading post at Fort Nassau was a considerable sailing time from the next port of call at Batavia. This meant that while Dutch sailors regularly caught blue-sleep, transmission of the virus across the oceans was much more difficult.
Swamp rash is a mosquito-borne virus which evolved from the historical Barmah Forest virus. It produces chills, fever, fatigue, swollen joints, and a blistery rash which spreads over most of the body. While most of the victims recover, in some cases the infection enters the lymphatic system, leading to painfully swollen lymph nodes and eventual death.
Swamp rash is not a continent-wide disease. The virus is mostly confined to the artificial wetlands in the Nyalananga [Murray] basin, although it has recently spread to the wetlands in the western regions of the Yadji lands [south-western Victoria]. For it to spread further, however, is unlikely. The mosquitoes which carry swamp rash are short-lived species, and the birds which are its other natural hosts do not migrate beyond the continent. While it would not be impossible for the virus to spread overseas, it would be unlikely.
The mortality rate of swamp rash varies. The Gunnagal who live along the Nyalananga itself have evolved some natural resistance to the virus, and so their mortality rate is only about 5% for children and less for adults. For visitors from elsewhere in the continent, or overseas, the mortality rate is about 10% for adults, and worse for children.
Of all of the afflictions found on the Aururian continent, however, none is deadlier than what the locals call the Waiting Death: Marnitja, in the Gunnagal language. Marnitja is an allohistorical henipavirus, related to the historical Hendra and Nipah viruses, and more distantly to measles and mumps. Marnitja originated as a bat-borne virus which spread via domesticated dingos and ultimately evolved into an exclusively human epidemic.
People infected with Marnitja show a distinctive two-stage set of symptoms. The first stage is a haemorrhagic infection of the lungs called the "pink cough," where the fevered victims experience severe coughing and other breathing difficulties. They also suffer from fatigue, fever, and sometimes blood loss and renal failure. Some survivors of the pink cough have life-long breathing problems.
Survivors of the pink cough, however, are not yet free of Marnitja. While they are no longer infectious, they may still be afflicted with the second stage of the virus. This is a form of encephalitis, an infection of their central nervous system which leads to fever, seizures, delirium and almost inevitable death. Survivors of the pink cough have to endure an interminable wait to find out whether they will succumb to the delirium; the usual period is two to three months, but on rare occasions it can take as long as three years [2]. This lingering period of uncertainty is what led the survivors to christen the disease the Waiting Death.
The fatality rate of Marnitja varies considerably, depending on a population's previous exposure to this virus or to infectious diseases in general. Amongst the Aururian peoples, each epidemic usually kills less than 5% of the population. For Eurasian peoples, the virus would kill anywhere between 10-15% of the population, depending on their nutritional levels and general health. For peoples with insufficient exposure to epidemic diseases – which in the early seventeenth century includes of the New World – the fatality rate is likely to be in excess of 20% of the population.
Given the shipping times between Aururia and the East Indies, Marnitja is also unlikely to be transmitted by direct infection. However, one of the distinctive features of Marnitja is that it produces a relatively high proportion (up to 0.5%) of asymptomatic carriers. Anyone who becomes an asymptomatic carrier will be infectious for life, and it will only take one such person to travel from Aururia to the rest of the world for Marnitja to become a global problem.
--
The first European exposure to Marnitja was in April 1625, when a Dutch trading fleet arrived in Fort Nassau [Perth] after sailing from the Netherlands. The Waiting Death burned through the ships Dordrecht and Sardam as they sailed to Batavia, but the pink cough had run its course before the ships reached the East Indies. While some of the sailors would later die in a fevered delirium, by this stage they were no longer infectious. One of their Yaora mistresses recognised the Waiting Death and described it to the Dutch, but they did not pay it much heed. They treated this malady as simply one more in a long list of tropical diseases which often struck Europeans who visited the Spice Islands.
They would soon learn the gravity of their mistake.
Centuries later, a collaboration of three authors – an epidemiologist, a linguist, and a historian – would trace the path of the first Marnitja epidemic as it burned across the globe. Their efforts were dedicated, their report exhaustive, and it would eventually be published in three languages on as many continents.
This report marked the authors as the first to accomplish many things. They were the first to trace the oldest references to the virus. They were the first to recommend the application of what would become the near-universal name for the disease (Marnitja), replacing the host of appellations which the disease had carried before that: the Dutch curse, the dying cough, the sweating sleep, the unholy death, and many more.
What these authors were not the first to do was discover the name of the first Dutch asymptomatic carrier who carried the disease to the world. History would never record that name. Yet these authors gave this carrier a name anyway: Patient Zero.
The authors discovered that Patient Zero was a sailor aboard the Dutch merchant ship Vliegende Hollander, which landed at Fort Nassau on 15 October 1626. Several sailors caught Marnitja on this visit, and many of them died from it. As before, the Dutch assumed that this was another tropical malady, and after conducting normal trade, set sail for Batavia. The Vliegende Hollander was one of four ships in this trading fleet, but after its arrival, it was the only one to be reloaded with gold and spices for a quick return to the Netherlands, along with five other ships making the voyage home.
The authors presumed that Patient Zero stayed on the Vliegende Hollander for most of the unloading and reloading, for there is no record that Marnitja spread from him to anyone in Batavia. The Vliegende Hollander and its fellow ships sailed west with the November monsoons. While crossing the Indian Ocean, the Vliegende Hollander became damaged in a storm, and had to put ashore on the eastern coast of Madagascar for repairs. Relations with the locals were peaceable enough after the captain provided a few gifts, and the repairs were effected over the next few weeks. The Vliegende Hollander departed the island for Amsterdam, some time behind its fellow ships. However, it left a legacy behind.
Madagascar became the first region of the Old World to know the scourge of Marnitja. In 1627, the affliction burned its way across the island, earning it the name of "burning lungs." It left behind a legacy of fevered, coughing victims, survivors with breathing difficulties, and other survivors who did not yet know the doom which awaited them.
The Mozambique Channel presented no barrier to an epidemic of the Waiting Death. Madagascar had long been a hub of traders coming to and from East Africa; the Portuguese who had begun to establish colonies along the coast were only seeking to break into a much longer-established market. From Madagascar, trading vessels carried the new affliction near-simultaneously to the Portuguese outposts at the Island of Mozambique and Zanzibar.
Once established on the African mainland, Marnitja spread rapidly both north and south. It left a deadly passage as far south as the Cape, devastating the Bantu and Khoisan peoples of southern Africa. To the north, it spread more slowly, reaching Ethiopia in 1628 and then Egypt in 1629. Seaborne trade carried it to the Persian Gulf in 1628, striking first at Muscat, then spreading along both shores of the Gulf and into Persian lands.
Marnitja reached Mecca in time for the annual hajj in 1629. Among the victims were a few pilgrims who believed that they had been spared from the visitation of this new malady, when in fact they would be bearing the disease home with them. From Egypt, Mecca and Persia, the disease was poised to spread over the rest of the House of Islam. However, it did not spread much into Christian Europe, for by this time the Waiting Death had already reached that continent by another route.
From Ethiopia, Marnitja did not just spread north; it also burned its way west across the Sahel. In time, it devastated all of the West African peoples, including kingdoms such as Allada, Oyo and Kaabu. As well as the suffering inflicted on these regions by the disease itself, the first wave of Marnitja also struck the European slave-trading outposts in West Africa.
Unfortunately, this was not enough to destroy the slave trade entirely, not with sugar planters in Brazil and the Caribbean with a seemingly endless demand for more labour. In 1630, among the unfortunate slaves crammed into European trading vessels were three asymptomatic carriers, two bound for Brazil, the other for Hispaniola. From here, the disease spread rapidly throughout the Caribbean and Portuguese Brazil, and more slowly into Mesoamerica, through Central America, and down into Peru. All of the heavily-settled parts of New Spain were also struck by the virus. The main wave of infection burned out in the northern deserts of New Spain and did not penetrate into most of North America. However, over the next few years, secondary waves of infection struck the European colonies on the eastern seaboard, and spread to the neighbouring Amerindian peoples.
Europe itself first felt the Waiting Death thanks to Patient Zero. On 21 August 1627, the Vliegende Hollander sailed into Amsterdam, where its crew disembarked. One week later, the first Dutch men and women developed fevers and chills, followed quickly by a hacking cough which grew ever worse.
Two days later, Marnitja caused its first deaths on the European mainland. The first of uncountably many. Many prominent Dutchmen died, including Frederik de Houtman, the discoverer of the South-Land, who succumbed to the pink cough on 1 October 1627 [3]. Still, Frederick Henry, the Prince of Orange, survived the disease without any apparent ill effects.
At this time, Europe was nine years into a war which another history would call the Thirty Years War. The Dutch Republic was not involved in the main part of this struggle, although it had been at war with Spain-Portugal since 1621. Its neighbours were at the forefront of the fighting, though; the Holy Roman Empire was the key battleground, and Christian IV of Denmark had led his kingdom into the war two years earlier.
In 1628, Marnitja spread rapidly through war-ravaged Germany, killing both sides indiscriminately. Recognising where it had come from, if not the cause of the disease, the Germans referred to the epidemic as the Dutch curse. It was a curse which would kill many of their people in the days to come, including several of the leading political and military figures of the day.
Like so many of his subjects, Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was afflicted by a severe bout of the pink cough. While he survived, he was gravely weakened, with breathing difficulties which would persist for the remainder of his truncated life. Left more vulnerable to other infections, he would succumb to pneumonia in 1631 [4].
The Catholic forces had two leading generals at this time. One, Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, died in a fevered delirium in February 1628. The other, Albrecht von Wallenstein, also caught the Dutch curse but escaped with only mild symptoms. However, the deaths and disruption caused by the disease meant that he had to abandon his plans for a siege of Straslund, the last holdout Protestant port on the southern Baltic coast.
On the Protestant side, the most prominent casualty of the Dutch curse was John George I, Elector of Saxony. Christian IV of Denmark survived, although he lost several of his children, including Prince Frederick [who would later have become King Frederick III]. His designated heir, Christian, survived Marnitja but experienced severe scarring of his lungs, which would later shorten Christian's life.
Most other major Protestant rulers survived, although Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia was permanently invalided by breathing problems caused by the pink cough. The effective governance of his state passed to his Catholic chancellor, Adam, Count of Schwarzenberg.
The Dutch curse could not, of course, be confined to the combatants in what would now not be called the Thirty Years War. It crossed the Rhine and swept into France around the same time as it was ravaging Germany. Here, Cardinal Richelieu had taken personal command of the royal armies besieging the Huguenots in La Rochelle. In April 1628 he died coughing up blood, and the Dutch curse took so many soldiers with him that the government forces abandoned the siege. The epidemic spread from here into Spain, where it took a heavy toll of the population, including several prominent nobles, although Felipe IV survived.
The Dutch curse spread eastward and southward from the Holy Roman Empire. In 1629, Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy, became one of the rarest of survivors, one who suffered but survived the delirium of the Waiting Death. Unfortunately, it left him with severe paralysis and impaired speech. His Francophile wife Christine Marie, the Duchess consort, was then pregnant with the future Louise Christine, and became the de facto regent of Savoy. Further south in Rome, Pope Urban VIII survived the curse, although several of his most prominent cardinals did not.
In its eastward spread, the Dutch curse cut a deadly path through Poland-Lithuania; the monarch Zygmunt III survived, but lost one of his sons, Aleksander Karol. The disease spread on into Muscovy, as well as passing south into the Ottoman-ruled Balkans. Sultan Murad IV survived without apparently even catching the disease, although it struck his court. The most prominent casualty in the Sublime Porte was the Grand Vizier, Gazi Ekrem Hüsrev Pasha. From here, it combined with the other wave of infection coming through Persia and Arabia, and burned its way across the length and breadth of Asia.
One final tendril of infection went north from Lithuania into Swedish-ruled Estonia, and thence into peninsular Sweden in 1630. This was a secondary wave of infection, since the disease had already entered Sweden from Denmark in 1628. However, among those who had not caught Marnitja during the first wave was the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus. He caught the pink cough in May 1630, and survived. By this time, though, word from the Netherlands (via several Aururian mistresses) meant that the Swedish monarch knew that he still needed to wait to see whether the delirium would take him. He might succumb in any time up to three years.
Gustavus Adolphus decided that if he did die, he would leave a legacy worth remembering.
--
Blue-sleep took longer to expand its deadly reach out of Aururia. Confined by sailing times from their trading posts, no early Dutch ship would bring the disease back to the Indies.
However, the Dutch were not the only early explorers of Aururia.
Portugal and England knew of the Dutch discovery of a new land near the Indies; word had not taken long to spread. However, the VOC had been assiduous in restricting knowledge of charts and other important navigational details, so other nations were not sure exactly where this new land could be found, or how to navigate it safely. England soon found other concerns besides the distant rumour of gold, but Portugal had a greater presence in the Indies. And, due to a combination of religious concerns and an ongoing war with the Dutch, a greater motivation to explore these new lands.
Father António de Andrade was a distinguished Portuguese Jesuit who had spent two and a half decades as the Society of Jesus' chief missionary in the Indies. He had been recalled to Goa in 1624, but he retained an interest in affairs in the Indies. With ever-growing rumours of the new land which the Dutch had discovered, he decided to return there and explore this new land to see whether he could spread the Word of God to the new peoples.
De Andrade returned to Flores in the Indies in 1629 along with his brother, Manuel Marques, and arranged for a ship to be sent to explore these new lands. Under de Andrade's guidance, the ship sailed to the south-east and explored part of the South-Land. They called this region Costa Problematica [Troublesome Coast], for what they found was a barren, forbidding land, with the natives being very reluctant to approach. De Andrade persisted, and had some brief encounters with some of the natives, but was unable to induce any of the natives to return to Flores on board the Portuguese ship.
De Andrade's visit marked the first Portuguese exploration of Aururia. It failed in terms of direct conversion, but he had always known that was unlikely on a first visit. The expedition did develop some useful charts of parts of the new land. Unfortunately, the sailing times were quick enough that it also brought back something else with it: blue-sleep. A sailor had caught the disease during one of the meetings with the Aururians, and it spread amongst the crew on the voyage back to Flores. Several of the sailors were still infectious when it reached the Portuguese colony.
Once a disease such as blue-sleep was established in the Indies, it inevitably spread. Airborne, easily transmissible and often lethal, blue-sleep followed the trade routes throughout the Indies and onto the Asian mainland. From here, it burned across the length of Asia and on into Africa and Europe.
Blue-sleep ravaged Europe in 1631-2. While the overall toll from this disease was lower than that of Marnitja, the greatest proportion of the deaths was among young adults [5]. This meant that it killed many young men of military age, which had considerable effects on the armies then fighting across much of the continent.
The disease took its toll of prominent members of European society, too. Perhaps the most notable victim was Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland. His death left his infant son Charles II as nominal sovereign and his dominions to be governed by an uncertain regency, with the claimants including George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham [6] and Thomas Wentworth.
In Poland-Lithuania, King Zygmunt III still survived, but the royal family lost another prominent member. The most prominent prince, Wladyslaw [who would have become King Wladyslaw IV in 1632] succumbed to blue-sleep.
The Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg suffered a severe toll due to an unfortunate confluence of timing; the children of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, and many of the other leading members of the House, were at the most vulnerable age. Ferdinand III had only succeeded his father for six weeks when he succumbed to blue-sleep on 18 October 1631. His only brother, Archduke Leopold, had died two weeks before, leaving no direct male heirs. He had only two surviving sisters, and one of them, Cecilia Renata, died in early November.
Worse, there were now no suitably-aged close male relatives amongst the Austrian Habsburgs. The closest male-line relative was the three-year-old Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Further Austria, and cousin of Ferdinand III. Ferdinand Charles had himself been born posthumously; his mother had been pregnant when his father Leopold, the old Emperor's last surviving brother [7] had died from the Dutch curse in April 1628.
The only other alternative was to find a husband for the last surviving daughter of Ferdinand II: Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria. She was reportedly intelligent, stern, driven, opinionated – and an extremely attractive political prize. The intrigues started before Ferdinand III's body had a chance to grow cold...
--
The seventeenth century was already a time of global upheaval. The European powers had begun their assault on the globe which would see them establish colonial control over most of the world's surface in the next few centuries. The deepening climatic effects of the Little Ice Age brought famine and other agricultural problems to much of the planet.
The Americas were in the midst of the greatest population replacement of the modern era. Japan was nearing the time when it would have chosen to close itself off from all but carefully regulated contact with the rest of the world. In China, the worsening climatic conditions brought about social unrest which would have led to the collapse of the native Ming Dynasty and its replacement by the foreign Manchu. In Europe itself, the continent convulsed as old political and religious certainties crumbled.
In these volatile times, the twin waves of Aururian epidemics could only add to the upheaval. Collectively, they killed 19% of the global population - over 100 million people - and their effects did not stop there. Marnitja, in particular, would recur every generation and depress the global population growth rate for centuries. The world which followed would be an emptier place.
More, the deaths and devastation had inevitable effects on the world's psyche. A new age had dawned, or so some later historians would say, when describing the changing attitudes to religion, to labour, and to social and political institutions.
Of course, some of those historians would argue that, for all of the death and upheaval which Aururian diseases caused, that this was not the greatest effect which the discovery of Aururia would have on the rest of the world.
--[1] Apart from maybe syphilis, but there's not yet been a definitive answer on whether that disease was from the Old World, the New World, or a fusion of the two.
[2] This waiting period is mirrored in the historical counterparts to Marnitja, named Hendra virus and Nipah virus. For those viruses, in some cases those diseases have taken over 4 years for the viral encephalitis to appear.
[3] This did not, in fact, shorten de Houtman's life by very much; in real history he died only a few weeks later.
[4] In real history, Ferdinand died in 1637.
[5] In this regard, blue-sleep is much like a historical avian-derived influenza virus, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. That disease, too, was most deadly for young adults.
[6] Historically, Buckingham was assassinated in August 1628 by a disgruntled soldier; here, the dislocation of diseases means that he was not in the vicinity of his would-be assassin, and so survives for the time being.
[7] Yes, another Leopold. Like many European royal families, the Habsburgs had a habit of recycling names.
--
Thoughts?
So just to check, is the driven and brilliant young lady being discussed Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria?
Anyway that was super interesting, you detailed everything incredibly well and have started making huge rippling impacts on the rest of the world and it seems set to only grow further!
I am glad the conversion failed, here's hoping that trend continues XD
Amazing work, seriously, so richly detailed, the politics, the cultural issues and war, the travel and impacts, all of it was so brilliantly done.
Anyway that was super interesting, you detailed everything incredibly well and have started making huge rippling impacts on the rest of the world and it seems set to only grow further!
I am glad the conversion failed, here's hoping that trend continues XD
Amazing work, seriously, so richly detailed, the politics, the cultural issues and war, the travel and impacts, all of it was so brilliantly done.
The changes are massive, yes. Inevitable that changes on that scale would happen whenever Aururian diseases escaped into the wider world. Whether it happened now or later, the mass dying would be more or less inevitable.
And a telling point is that both Aururian diseases probably inflicted a lower percentage death toll that one disease (smallpox) inflicted on the New World historically. Eurasian diseases are still going to hit the Aururians hard at some point; it's just that due to the nature of the sailing routes, many of those diseases will take a lot longer to arrive.
The very one. Historically married to Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria in 1635 after the death of his first wife a few months earlier. Now considered even a greater prize. An interesting point is that even in OTL, part of her marriage contract stipulated that she did not lose her inheritance rights to the Habsburg heritage, which here is even more valuable, and I suspect that a similar clause will be sought in marriage contracts allohistorically.
Oh, absolutely. The changes will be massive. From a narrative point of view, though, the main focus remains on alt-Australia and NZ. There will be some descriptions of changes throughout the broader world, but this will be through occasional chapters and glimpses rather than a detailed exploration of the whole world.
At least in the short term, it is unlikely that other religions will become established in Aururia, save for *Western Australia. Probably Christianity (and perhaps other religions) will get established in part of the continent eventually, but that doesn't necessarily mean everywhere.
Very interesting stuff, good luck to her
That makes sense and helps keep a tight narrative focus which makes sense!
I see, good luck to the Aururian's resisting, glad to hear most places won't get too overwhelmed though, thanks!
Lands of Red and Gold #26: The Sounds of Harmony
Lands of Red and Gold #26: The Sounds of Harmony
"The greatest of leaders speaks the least, and inspires the most. He does not demand obedience, he receives it. A lesser leader seeks respect, a greater leader knows that he will earn it. The grandest deeds of a leader are those which his followers perform without needing his instructions."
- From Oora Gulalu [The Endless Road], a text composed in Tjibarr in the fifteenth century, and widely respected by both Plirite and Tjarrling believers
--
Serpent Day, Cycle of Salt, 382nd Year of Harmony (4.10.382) [1] / 10 July 1621
Crescent Bay, The Island [Kingscote, Kangaroo Island]
Wind blew steadily from the north, swirling an irregular course across the city streets, up the hill slopes, and through the open doors of the temple. With it came the tang of salt, a reminder of the seas that formed the livelihood of all the Nangu. Perhaps it carried the sounds of the city streets, too, but they could not be heard. As with all proper houses of harmony, the Temple of the Five Winds supplied its own sounds.
Tinkles, ringing and thuds came from the chimes that hung on every exterior wall and in some of the open passages inside; a soothing irregular melody born of the endless breeze and marked in sounds of brass and wood. Underlying the loud but unpredictable chimes came the softer but steadier beat of hands striking stretched emu skin; the reliable rhythm of temple drums.
Yuma Tjula let the noises of the temple wash over him, cleansing his mind and bringing him closer to a state of harmony. So it always was when he came here. He was not a devout man, either in his own estimation or that of the priests who remarked on his attitude. Still, he had attended the Temple of the Five Winds since childhood, when duty called or when he needed guidance.
Such as now.
Yuma knelt in the north-easternmost chamber of the temple. Closest to the sun, given where it stood in the morning sky, and its light flowed into the room through the half-moon windows spaced along the walls. Beneath those openings, shapes had been carved from wood and attached to each wall; stylised depictions of a myriad of divine beings.
In the centre of the chamber, a gilded statue loomed large, but Yuma gave it little heed. The Good Man had mastered wisdom, but he had much loftier concerns than intervening on behalf of one repentant trading captain. Instead, Yuma had taken up a position beneath the ornately-carved forms of the Fire Brothers; ruby-eyed Carrak standing with burning sword held aloft, while diamond-eyed Burrayang knelt to turn over ashes into new life.
Head bowed, knees aching but ignored, Yuma shaped the litany of his soul into fitting words, that the Fire Brothers might hear his misdeeds and grant him guidance. He explained his inaction in the White City, far to the west. How the giant ships of the Raw Men had appeared in the harbours while his own vessel was there to trade.
His voice growing softer, his tone more despondent even to his own ears, Yuma admitted how he had failed to follow the third path, the path of decisiveness. He could have taken decisive action by contacting the Raw Men directly, or he could have waited properly, until they had the chance to contact him. Instead, he had taken a half-measure, neither truly decisive nor truly inactive, by finishing his trade and then departing. He had thought, in his own misguided mind, that he could return next season to make proper contact.
Instead, he had learned that in his absence the Raw Men had visited the Nangu who lived in the Foreign Quarter. They had spoken briefly to the resident Nangu, then departed. Their new trade agreement, proclaimed in stone in the White City, announced that the Raw Men were restricted to ports beyond Sunset Point, where they could not contact the Nangu.
Oh, the lost opportunity! Since that time, Yuma had come to the unfortunate realisation that his actions had been waal [bringing discord], due to his lack of proper decisiveness. No point asking the Fire Brothers to correct his mistake; if they were prepared to intercede and change the past, then it would have already been remade. Instead, he asked for them to guide him in proper decisiveness in the future. There would be more chances with these Raw Men, if he sought them, and if he acted properly when the moments were granted.
His prayers concluded, Yuma waited in silence for a long moment, straining to hear if he would receive any instructions. He heard nothing, no still small voice whispering beneath the sounds of harmony. All as he had more than half expected. If the Fire Brothers were going to guide him along the path, then he would need to be alert in the future; they offered nothing immediate.
Of course, he would also need to consider his own actions, and build his own knowledge of the paths. So it always was; the search for self-insight and greater understanding was a lifelong endeavour. He would not need to come to a temple for such striving, though. He would reflect on his own deeds, and ensure that he was guiding his own steps along the paths.
With his main purpose completed, Yuma rose, glad to give his weary knees rest. He moved to stand with bowed head beneath the statue of the Good Man, and muttered a few invocations of respect for his exalted knowledge. He walked around the statue to face west, then added a brief prayer of respect for all of his ancestors and descendants.
Yuma ambled silently through the corridors of the temple until he reached the eastern entrance. He exchanged a few polite, ritualised phrases with the two priests seated on either side of the doorway, then strode down the hillside path toward the main buildings of Crescent Bay.
As he hurried down the path, he still found time to look over the town, and the shining blue seas beyond. Crescent Bay itself had the look of stone and all too precious wood, while the sparkling water beyond was decorated with a half-dozen ships. Yuma classified them with an ease born of much experience at sea.
The one ship sailing in from the east was a day-farer, an ancient design whose shallow draft allowed it to be pulled up on any beach in case of a change in the weather. Its crew would have taken it on a fishing voyage to bring in some of the sea's bounty. Hardly the grandest use of a ship, but one which might return a slight profit. The other five ships were sailing in from the north-west. They were all double-hulled regular ships, heavily laden with yams and other essential food from Pankala or some other Mutjing port.
Yuma's own bloodline had ships taking part in that trade, he presumed, although he had not bothered to check any time recently. Like most Nangu sailors, he had learned his craft on the regular round trips between the Island and the Seven Sisters [the Mutjing lands]. As soon as he became a captain, though, he took his ship elsewhere. No captain could earn a decent profit trading for food.
As he descended from the hill and strode through the town, people stepped out of his path. Not all of them would know him by name or sight, though he thought that most would; perhaps he flattered himself. Still, all of them could see the headwreath that held his hair back from his face. Dyed with sea purple [2], woven with Yadji gold-thread and studded with Maori jade and river sapphires, it proclaimed that he was a captain of great wealth and substance. Men blocked his path at their peril, and fortunately everyone today recognised it.
The white-gray granite walls of the Council Hall loomed large above him as he neared, although they lacked the ornateness of the Temple of the Five Winds, or most any other temple on the Island. Naturally. Few elders would allow their bloodlines to spend much of their hard-earned trading wealth for a building which those elders usually visited only once a year. Yet pious captains and elders would lavish much more of their fortunes to support the priests who balanced the harmony that allowed the Nangu to flourish.
The guards at the doors of the council chamber admitted him with nothing but a brief nod. All as it should be. As the third-most senior captain of the Tjula bloodline, Yuma had the right to attend any meeting of the Council, and hear what the elders decided. Perhaps even speak to influence them, given the opportunity.
Inside, a series of tables had been arranged into a rough circle. The tables bespoke more wealth than the rest of the chamber, since they were made from jarrah wood which had been shipped back from Tiayal [Atjuntja lands]. Twenty-one seats were arranged around these tables; one for the elder of each of the surviving bloodlines. Everyone else in the room had to stand behind.
Seven of those seats were still empty when Yuma entered the room; those elders had yet to enter the chamber. Perhaps not all of the elders would be near the town to attend. Today marked an almost unheard of event; the Council had been called together outside of the usual annual meeting at the spring equinox, halfway through the year. A sign of the importance which had been attached to the news out of the west, and another reminder to Yuma of the blunder he had made in committing a half-measure.
Yuma exchanged greetings with Wirnugal, elder of the Tjula, and with three other senior captains who had gathered for this meeting of the Council. Keeping his voice low, he asked, "Are all of the other elders expected?"
Wirnugal said, "The Manyilti and Wolalta elders will not be attending; they are both off the Island. All of the others should arrive soon." His voice had an undertone of frustration; presumably the late-arriving elders were seeking to show their status by making others wait for them.
Yuma also wondered, absently, why the Manyilti and Wolalta elders were not anywhere on the Island. Elders rarely left the Island except for one of two reasons: to visit some holy sites in the Five Rivers, or to personally oversee some important trading venture.
Neither of those two elders was particularly pious, so Yuma doubted that their absence had anything to do with religious visits. That meant some new trade coup might well be in the offing. The port captain of Jugara, the gateway to the Five Rivers, was of the Manyilti bloodline, so perhaps their elder was negotiating new trade terms with some Tjibarri faction. Wolalta captains had won their greatest trading coups in voyages to the Spice Coast [eastern Australian coastline]; might they have made some new discovery there?
His musings were cut short when a group of five elders arrived together. Suspicion hardened in his heart. Perhaps these elders had waited to enter together as a group to avoid any concerns of status. Or, more likely, they had been conducting private negotiations. Very unfortunate, in that case, since these elders also represented some of the most powerful bloodlines.
He knew them all, of course. Such as the most senior of the elders, titled the Lorekeeper because of his twin roles as rememberer of Council decisions and adjudicator of disputes. It made sense for him to arrive late. But the others did not have his seniority, only their pride and their wealth. It was not fitting for them to keep the rest of the elders waiting.
Punalta Warrikendi ambled to his seat, as if he would never be hurried. Probably not an act, in his case. Punalta was renowned as the most devout elder. He might almost have been a priest himself, and occasional rumours suggested that he planned to retire to one temple or another. It had never happened, though. Yuma suspected that Punalta preferred to remain on the Council and focus their minds on proper questions of harmony and perseverance.
The third elder wore a full beard, which was so rare for a Nangu that he was near universally known as the Beard. He had picked up that habit when he was a trader who lived for many years in the Foreign Quarter of the White City. That time had given him many valuable connections amongst the Atjuntja. Under his aegis, the Kalendi had become one of the wealthiest bloodlines.
Still, Yuma thought that the Beard had become too much like an Atjuntja, and not just in ways as trivial as appearance. Rumours were rife that the Beard had acquired some of the other distasteful Atjuntja habits. If true, though, he indulged those habits only behind the closed walls of his city residence or in his manor overlooking the Narrows, and neither he nor his Mutjing mistresses spoke openly of his habits. The Beard also possessed a powerful rage which he used when challenged. So not even the priests dared to call him out on those rumours.
The fourth elder to take his seat had lighter skin than the norm for a Nangu, and a coarseness to his features proclaimed his foreign heritage. Nakatta was the only elder who was not Island-born. A native Gunnagal from upriver Tjibarr, he had been adopted into the Muwanna bloodline and rose to prominence after several bold trading coups with his former countrymen. Under his auspices, the Muwanna continued to negotiate favourable trade terms with the ever-shifting factions of Tjibarr.
The fifth elder, Burra Liwang, had a peculiar way of stepping, moving his feet so silently and delicately that he gave the impression of sliding rather than walking. His effortless pace allowed him ample time to look over the room, offering friendly smiles to most of the elders, including Wirnugal. Those smiles offered some reassurance that the five elders had not been conducting private negotiations to the disadvantage of the other bloodlines.
Of course, Burra often played the role of peacemaker among the bloodlines. The role suited his temperament, and he was also helped by his bloodline's holdings. The Liwang had relatively few trading ships. They obtained most of their wealth because they had the largest holdings on the Island itself, and controlled the largest proportion of local spice and dye production. Their main trade was with other bloodlines who would then export the dyes and spices. They had found it more convenient to establish a reputation for equal dealing with all other bloodlines, rather than needing to outdo rivals in foreign trade.
When Burra was seated, the Lorekeeper moved to his own chair. He nodded to the two empty chairs and said, "With your elders absent, will the most senior captains present of the Wolalta and Manyilti sit on their behalf?"
As the two captains moved into chairs, the Lorekeeper met the gaze of the black-clad priest who stood just inside the door. The priest moved to stand beside the Lorekeeper, and offered an opening invocation for the meeting, calling for all present to remember the wisdom of the Good Man and conduct themselves in accordance with the Sevenfold Path.
Servants moved around next, pouring gum cider into silver goblets for each seated man. It had to be gum cider, of course; offering any lesser beverage here would be an insult.
The Lorekeeper said, "The Council has been called together out of season to discuss this news of outlanders." He provided a brief summary of the contact between these Raw Men, the Atjuntja, and the Nangu in the west. "So the Council must decide whether restrictions should be placed on contact and trade with these Raw Men."
"A captain has the right to trade wherever he wishes," the Beard said.
Contentiousness rang clearly in his voice, offering a warning. In some bloodlines, the elder was simply one strong voice among many. Among the Kalendi, though, the Beard's word was absolute. If he took offence at an action, a feud could follow, or worse yet a vendetta.
"There is precedent for binding the bloodlines," the Lorekeeper said, his voice calm. "In 183 [AD 1422], the Council agreed to restrict all contact with the Atjuntja to their designated trade ports, and to punish any captain who sought to trade elsewhere. That edict was allowed to lapse in 211 [AD 1450], and has been enforced by custom ever since."
All as it should be, Yuma thought. Custom and familiarity made it easier for men to walk the right paths, which was why they were usually followed. Of course, the custom was adhered to in this case due to the unspoken threat that any bloodline who broke the Atjuntja trade edict would find every other bloodline turning on them.
The Lorekeeper added, "But the Council has that authority, if it so chooses."
The Beard grunted, rather than offering any substantive answer. That was an even more ominous sign that he was determined to force his own way. He had the determination to push that into feud or vendetta, too.
Yuma hoped that the Beard could be persuaded to show restraint. Once there had been twenty-four bloodlines on the Island. Three had been destroyed utterly in vendettas, and over the centuries some others had come close to destruction. Bloodlines always competed with each other in commercial rivalries, but sometimes those rivalries became matters of pride or hatred. In those cases, a feud or vendetta could follow, with the knife replacing the trade bargain. No matter how much the priests decried them for bringing discord, vendettas could still be called, and inevitably turned out deadly for both sides. Not to mention for outsiders caught up in the chaos.
When he spoke, Nakatta's voice still had a slight rasp which betrayed his foreign origins. "Before we consider that, we must know more of these far westerners. What has been seen of them?"
"Only their one visit to the White City," said the Lorekeeper. "Everything else is rumour and wild tales."
"One should never give too much heed to rumours," the Beard said. That remark produced a number of carefully blank faces around the chamber.
"These Raw Men are real," said Punalta. "Yet they are also strange. Strangeness leads to uncertainty, to tale-mongering, and to exaggeration. Rumours are inevitable, in such circumstances. We must not allow wild tales to lead us to discord."
"It is the nature of their strangeness that concerns me," Nakatta said. "Every people have their own customs which appear strange to others, especially peoples who have not learnt the paths of harmony. Are these Raw Men strange only because they are different, or because they have crafts and knowledge that we lack, as our forefathers did not know of the working of iron before we learned from the Atjuntja?"
A sign! Yuma realised, at that moment. The Fire Brothers must have been listening after all, and allowed him to see it. He tapped his foot on the stone floor, a polite way of signalling that he wanted to speak.
Wirnugal, fortunately, was alert. "I wish one of my captains to be permitted to speak," he said.
The Lorekeeper glanced around the elders. When none of them objected, he signalled for Yuma to proceed.
Yuma thought for a moment, considering how much information he should reveal. Knowledge was a trade good, often the most valuable of all. Yet he needed to be decisive, and knowledge was of no use if it was never acted on. "These Raw Men have some crafts which we lack. Shipbuilding, of a certainty, and perhaps others. I have seen their mighty vessels in the White City, large enough to make a great-ship seem small. Of the other rumours I cannot speak with assurance, but they are said to have great knowledge of weapons, too."
"How fast are those ships?" asked the captain sitting for the Wolalta elder; Yuma did not know his name.
"I cannot be certain; I saw them only within the harbour. Their sails are large, though. I expect that they can run very fast with the wind. Into the wind, I think that our ships would be more agile."
"How would they have built ships so large?" another elder asked, but the Lorekeeper signalled for silence.
The Lorekeeper said, "These questions should be answered, but not in this time and place. Thank you for your words to the elders, Yuma Tjula."
Nakatta said, "Shipbuilding or not, we must know these Raw Men's interests. Have they comes as wanderers [explorers] or as traders?"
"Both, so far as we can tell," the Lorekeeper said. "They have concluded a trade agreement with the King of Kings. But they came first as wanderers, and wanderers they will no doubt continue to be."
"Will they wander to the island, then?" Nakatta asked.
That question provoked some heated discussion. The Beard led a group of about a third of the elders who exclaimed about the myriad opportunities available for trade with these new Raw Men, whoever they were. Nakatta led a similar number of elders who pointed out the threat of competition, and the dangers of having these outlanders sail directly to the Island.
Yuma wondered about the dangers himself. The only other true seafarers in the world were the Maori, and they did not sail further than the Cider Isle. That had always left the Nangu free to trade and sail elsewhere, whenever they pleased. Without competition, and without threat.
Still, if these Raw Men had such marvellous trade goods, the wealth that they could bring would be fantastic. Even if they had superior knowledge, well, the Nangu could learn from them. They had learned ironworking from the Atjuntja, and, if the old stories were true, other arts of seafaring from the Maori. They could learn again, if they needed.
After the elders had argued for a while, Punalta said, "This debate ignores the essential question. Do these Raw Men know of the Good Man and the Sevenfold Path?"
The Lorekeeper said, "No, not according to the reports. They worship three gods like the Yadji, not two like the Atjuntja. They think that their gods' will is absolute, that nothing men can do will change their destiny. They are even worse than the Atjuntja, apparently, for they believe that all men are depraved and will act to bring discord."
"Then they must be taught the truth," Punalta said. "If we do not teach them to act according to the Sevenfold Path, then the consequences of their disharmony will not be limited to them; they will bring chaos and disruption to us all."
"So, then, we must contact and trade with them," the Beard said.
"And invite them to bring their disharmony to us?" Nakatta answered.
Burra Liwang, who had been silent throughout the long argument, tapped his foot on the stone. An unusual action for an elder, but it got everybody's attention. Burra said, "These Raw Men will come anyway, whether we hide or not. They already know we are here. The Atjuntja would have told them of us even if they had not met our own people. They are wanderers, so they will come. If so, better that we contact them in the west than on our own Island."
As he usually did, Burra had found a way to bring the elders to agreement. With him guiding the discussion, the Council agreed to circumspectly search for a way to contact the Raw Men's trading posts in the western Atjuntja lands, when they were established.
If that failed, then captains would be permitted to sail into the west beyond Sunset Point, if they wanted to brave the endless winds. Any captains who wanted to do so could see if they could sail directly to the Raw Men's homelands. However, the Council ordered that any west-venturing captains must make absolutely certain that they gave the Atjuntja no warning, and that they did not land anywhere on western Atjuntja lands. That would break the Nangu's own trade agreements with the Atjuntja, and in a way which brought no gain.
With that agreement, the Lorekeeper called the Council meeting to an end.
Yuma kept his face carefully impassive, but he now knew what he had to do.
--
[1] The Gunnagal calendar (adopted by the Nangu) divides the year into 30 cycles of 12 days, with an additional 5 or 6 intercalary days at the end of the year. Each of the days and cycles are both named and numbered. So 4.10.382 is the fourth day in the tenth cycle of the year 382, ie Serpent Day in the Cycle of Salt. There are also "months" of 30 days, which overlap this timing and are used for some social and religious purposes, but which are not used in the standard version of naming and numbering days.
[2] Sea purple refers to a dye made from the large rock shell (Thais orbita), a relative of the Mediterranean sea snails that produced purple and blue dyes which were extremely valued commodities in classical times. Even to the Nangu, sea purple is a rare and valuable dye; while there are no formal restrictions on who can wear it, the price it commands means that only elders, the greatest trade captains, and their most favoured wives and mistresses can afford to do so.
--
Thoughts?
"The greatest of leaders speaks the least, and inspires the most. He does not demand obedience, he receives it. A lesser leader seeks respect, a greater leader knows that he will earn it. The grandest deeds of a leader are those which his followers perform without needing his instructions."
- From Oora Gulalu [The Endless Road], a text composed in Tjibarr in the fifteenth century, and widely respected by both Plirite and Tjarrling believers
--
Serpent Day, Cycle of Salt, 382nd Year of Harmony (4.10.382) [1] / 10 July 1621
Crescent Bay, The Island [Kingscote, Kangaroo Island]
Wind blew steadily from the north, swirling an irregular course across the city streets, up the hill slopes, and through the open doors of the temple. With it came the tang of salt, a reminder of the seas that formed the livelihood of all the Nangu. Perhaps it carried the sounds of the city streets, too, but they could not be heard. As with all proper houses of harmony, the Temple of the Five Winds supplied its own sounds.
Tinkles, ringing and thuds came from the chimes that hung on every exterior wall and in some of the open passages inside; a soothing irregular melody born of the endless breeze and marked in sounds of brass and wood. Underlying the loud but unpredictable chimes came the softer but steadier beat of hands striking stretched emu skin; the reliable rhythm of temple drums.
Yuma Tjula let the noises of the temple wash over him, cleansing his mind and bringing him closer to a state of harmony. So it always was when he came here. He was not a devout man, either in his own estimation or that of the priests who remarked on his attitude. Still, he had attended the Temple of the Five Winds since childhood, when duty called or when he needed guidance.
Such as now.
Yuma knelt in the north-easternmost chamber of the temple. Closest to the sun, given where it stood in the morning sky, and its light flowed into the room through the half-moon windows spaced along the walls. Beneath those openings, shapes had been carved from wood and attached to each wall; stylised depictions of a myriad of divine beings.
In the centre of the chamber, a gilded statue loomed large, but Yuma gave it little heed. The Good Man had mastered wisdom, but he had much loftier concerns than intervening on behalf of one repentant trading captain. Instead, Yuma had taken up a position beneath the ornately-carved forms of the Fire Brothers; ruby-eyed Carrak standing with burning sword held aloft, while diamond-eyed Burrayang knelt to turn over ashes into new life.
Head bowed, knees aching but ignored, Yuma shaped the litany of his soul into fitting words, that the Fire Brothers might hear his misdeeds and grant him guidance. He explained his inaction in the White City, far to the west. How the giant ships of the Raw Men had appeared in the harbours while his own vessel was there to trade.
His voice growing softer, his tone more despondent even to his own ears, Yuma admitted how he had failed to follow the third path, the path of decisiveness. He could have taken decisive action by contacting the Raw Men directly, or he could have waited properly, until they had the chance to contact him. Instead, he had taken a half-measure, neither truly decisive nor truly inactive, by finishing his trade and then departing. He had thought, in his own misguided mind, that he could return next season to make proper contact.
Instead, he had learned that in his absence the Raw Men had visited the Nangu who lived in the Foreign Quarter. They had spoken briefly to the resident Nangu, then departed. Their new trade agreement, proclaimed in stone in the White City, announced that the Raw Men were restricted to ports beyond Sunset Point, where they could not contact the Nangu.
Oh, the lost opportunity! Since that time, Yuma had come to the unfortunate realisation that his actions had been waal [bringing discord], due to his lack of proper decisiveness. No point asking the Fire Brothers to correct his mistake; if they were prepared to intercede and change the past, then it would have already been remade. Instead, he asked for them to guide him in proper decisiveness in the future. There would be more chances with these Raw Men, if he sought them, and if he acted properly when the moments were granted.
His prayers concluded, Yuma waited in silence for a long moment, straining to hear if he would receive any instructions. He heard nothing, no still small voice whispering beneath the sounds of harmony. All as he had more than half expected. If the Fire Brothers were going to guide him along the path, then he would need to be alert in the future; they offered nothing immediate.
Of course, he would also need to consider his own actions, and build his own knowledge of the paths. So it always was; the search for self-insight and greater understanding was a lifelong endeavour. He would not need to come to a temple for such striving, though. He would reflect on his own deeds, and ensure that he was guiding his own steps along the paths.
With his main purpose completed, Yuma rose, glad to give his weary knees rest. He moved to stand with bowed head beneath the statue of the Good Man, and muttered a few invocations of respect for his exalted knowledge. He walked around the statue to face west, then added a brief prayer of respect for all of his ancestors and descendants.
Yuma ambled silently through the corridors of the temple until he reached the eastern entrance. He exchanged a few polite, ritualised phrases with the two priests seated on either side of the doorway, then strode down the hillside path toward the main buildings of Crescent Bay.
As he hurried down the path, he still found time to look over the town, and the shining blue seas beyond. Crescent Bay itself had the look of stone and all too precious wood, while the sparkling water beyond was decorated with a half-dozen ships. Yuma classified them with an ease born of much experience at sea.
The one ship sailing in from the east was a day-farer, an ancient design whose shallow draft allowed it to be pulled up on any beach in case of a change in the weather. Its crew would have taken it on a fishing voyage to bring in some of the sea's bounty. Hardly the grandest use of a ship, but one which might return a slight profit. The other five ships were sailing in from the north-west. They were all double-hulled regular ships, heavily laden with yams and other essential food from Pankala or some other Mutjing port.
Yuma's own bloodline had ships taking part in that trade, he presumed, although he had not bothered to check any time recently. Like most Nangu sailors, he had learned his craft on the regular round trips between the Island and the Seven Sisters [the Mutjing lands]. As soon as he became a captain, though, he took his ship elsewhere. No captain could earn a decent profit trading for food.
As he descended from the hill and strode through the town, people stepped out of his path. Not all of them would know him by name or sight, though he thought that most would; perhaps he flattered himself. Still, all of them could see the headwreath that held his hair back from his face. Dyed with sea purple [2], woven with Yadji gold-thread and studded with Maori jade and river sapphires, it proclaimed that he was a captain of great wealth and substance. Men blocked his path at their peril, and fortunately everyone today recognised it.
The white-gray granite walls of the Council Hall loomed large above him as he neared, although they lacked the ornateness of the Temple of the Five Winds, or most any other temple on the Island. Naturally. Few elders would allow their bloodlines to spend much of their hard-earned trading wealth for a building which those elders usually visited only once a year. Yet pious captains and elders would lavish much more of their fortunes to support the priests who balanced the harmony that allowed the Nangu to flourish.
The guards at the doors of the council chamber admitted him with nothing but a brief nod. All as it should be. As the third-most senior captain of the Tjula bloodline, Yuma had the right to attend any meeting of the Council, and hear what the elders decided. Perhaps even speak to influence them, given the opportunity.
Inside, a series of tables had been arranged into a rough circle. The tables bespoke more wealth than the rest of the chamber, since they were made from jarrah wood which had been shipped back from Tiayal [Atjuntja lands]. Twenty-one seats were arranged around these tables; one for the elder of each of the surviving bloodlines. Everyone else in the room had to stand behind.
Seven of those seats were still empty when Yuma entered the room; those elders had yet to enter the chamber. Perhaps not all of the elders would be near the town to attend. Today marked an almost unheard of event; the Council had been called together outside of the usual annual meeting at the spring equinox, halfway through the year. A sign of the importance which had been attached to the news out of the west, and another reminder to Yuma of the blunder he had made in committing a half-measure.
Yuma exchanged greetings with Wirnugal, elder of the Tjula, and with three other senior captains who had gathered for this meeting of the Council. Keeping his voice low, he asked, "Are all of the other elders expected?"
Wirnugal said, "The Manyilti and Wolalta elders will not be attending; they are both off the Island. All of the others should arrive soon." His voice had an undertone of frustration; presumably the late-arriving elders were seeking to show their status by making others wait for them.
Yuma also wondered, absently, why the Manyilti and Wolalta elders were not anywhere on the Island. Elders rarely left the Island except for one of two reasons: to visit some holy sites in the Five Rivers, or to personally oversee some important trading venture.
Neither of those two elders was particularly pious, so Yuma doubted that their absence had anything to do with religious visits. That meant some new trade coup might well be in the offing. The port captain of Jugara, the gateway to the Five Rivers, was of the Manyilti bloodline, so perhaps their elder was negotiating new trade terms with some Tjibarri faction. Wolalta captains had won their greatest trading coups in voyages to the Spice Coast [eastern Australian coastline]; might they have made some new discovery there?
His musings were cut short when a group of five elders arrived together. Suspicion hardened in his heart. Perhaps these elders had waited to enter together as a group to avoid any concerns of status. Or, more likely, they had been conducting private negotiations. Very unfortunate, in that case, since these elders also represented some of the most powerful bloodlines.
He knew them all, of course. Such as the most senior of the elders, titled the Lorekeeper because of his twin roles as rememberer of Council decisions and adjudicator of disputes. It made sense for him to arrive late. But the others did not have his seniority, only their pride and their wealth. It was not fitting for them to keep the rest of the elders waiting.
Punalta Warrikendi ambled to his seat, as if he would never be hurried. Probably not an act, in his case. Punalta was renowned as the most devout elder. He might almost have been a priest himself, and occasional rumours suggested that he planned to retire to one temple or another. It had never happened, though. Yuma suspected that Punalta preferred to remain on the Council and focus their minds on proper questions of harmony and perseverance.
The third elder wore a full beard, which was so rare for a Nangu that he was near universally known as the Beard. He had picked up that habit when he was a trader who lived for many years in the Foreign Quarter of the White City. That time had given him many valuable connections amongst the Atjuntja. Under his aegis, the Kalendi had become one of the wealthiest bloodlines.
Still, Yuma thought that the Beard had become too much like an Atjuntja, and not just in ways as trivial as appearance. Rumours were rife that the Beard had acquired some of the other distasteful Atjuntja habits. If true, though, he indulged those habits only behind the closed walls of his city residence or in his manor overlooking the Narrows, and neither he nor his Mutjing mistresses spoke openly of his habits. The Beard also possessed a powerful rage which he used when challenged. So not even the priests dared to call him out on those rumours.
The fourth elder to take his seat had lighter skin than the norm for a Nangu, and a coarseness to his features proclaimed his foreign heritage. Nakatta was the only elder who was not Island-born. A native Gunnagal from upriver Tjibarr, he had been adopted into the Muwanna bloodline and rose to prominence after several bold trading coups with his former countrymen. Under his auspices, the Muwanna continued to negotiate favourable trade terms with the ever-shifting factions of Tjibarr.
The fifth elder, Burra Liwang, had a peculiar way of stepping, moving his feet so silently and delicately that he gave the impression of sliding rather than walking. His effortless pace allowed him ample time to look over the room, offering friendly smiles to most of the elders, including Wirnugal. Those smiles offered some reassurance that the five elders had not been conducting private negotiations to the disadvantage of the other bloodlines.
Of course, Burra often played the role of peacemaker among the bloodlines. The role suited his temperament, and he was also helped by his bloodline's holdings. The Liwang had relatively few trading ships. They obtained most of their wealth because they had the largest holdings on the Island itself, and controlled the largest proportion of local spice and dye production. Their main trade was with other bloodlines who would then export the dyes and spices. They had found it more convenient to establish a reputation for equal dealing with all other bloodlines, rather than needing to outdo rivals in foreign trade.
When Burra was seated, the Lorekeeper moved to his own chair. He nodded to the two empty chairs and said, "With your elders absent, will the most senior captains present of the Wolalta and Manyilti sit on their behalf?"
As the two captains moved into chairs, the Lorekeeper met the gaze of the black-clad priest who stood just inside the door. The priest moved to stand beside the Lorekeeper, and offered an opening invocation for the meeting, calling for all present to remember the wisdom of the Good Man and conduct themselves in accordance with the Sevenfold Path.
Servants moved around next, pouring gum cider into silver goblets for each seated man. It had to be gum cider, of course; offering any lesser beverage here would be an insult.
The Lorekeeper said, "The Council has been called together out of season to discuss this news of outlanders." He provided a brief summary of the contact between these Raw Men, the Atjuntja, and the Nangu in the west. "So the Council must decide whether restrictions should be placed on contact and trade with these Raw Men."
"A captain has the right to trade wherever he wishes," the Beard said.
Contentiousness rang clearly in his voice, offering a warning. In some bloodlines, the elder was simply one strong voice among many. Among the Kalendi, though, the Beard's word was absolute. If he took offence at an action, a feud could follow, or worse yet a vendetta.
"There is precedent for binding the bloodlines," the Lorekeeper said, his voice calm. "In 183 [AD 1422], the Council agreed to restrict all contact with the Atjuntja to their designated trade ports, and to punish any captain who sought to trade elsewhere. That edict was allowed to lapse in 211 [AD 1450], and has been enforced by custom ever since."
All as it should be, Yuma thought. Custom and familiarity made it easier for men to walk the right paths, which was why they were usually followed. Of course, the custom was adhered to in this case due to the unspoken threat that any bloodline who broke the Atjuntja trade edict would find every other bloodline turning on them.
The Lorekeeper added, "But the Council has that authority, if it so chooses."
The Beard grunted, rather than offering any substantive answer. That was an even more ominous sign that he was determined to force his own way. He had the determination to push that into feud or vendetta, too.
Yuma hoped that the Beard could be persuaded to show restraint. Once there had been twenty-four bloodlines on the Island. Three had been destroyed utterly in vendettas, and over the centuries some others had come close to destruction. Bloodlines always competed with each other in commercial rivalries, but sometimes those rivalries became matters of pride or hatred. In those cases, a feud or vendetta could follow, with the knife replacing the trade bargain. No matter how much the priests decried them for bringing discord, vendettas could still be called, and inevitably turned out deadly for both sides. Not to mention for outsiders caught up in the chaos.
When he spoke, Nakatta's voice still had a slight rasp which betrayed his foreign origins. "Before we consider that, we must know more of these far westerners. What has been seen of them?"
"Only their one visit to the White City," said the Lorekeeper. "Everything else is rumour and wild tales."
"One should never give too much heed to rumours," the Beard said. That remark produced a number of carefully blank faces around the chamber.
"These Raw Men are real," said Punalta. "Yet they are also strange. Strangeness leads to uncertainty, to tale-mongering, and to exaggeration. Rumours are inevitable, in such circumstances. We must not allow wild tales to lead us to discord."
"It is the nature of their strangeness that concerns me," Nakatta said. "Every people have their own customs which appear strange to others, especially peoples who have not learnt the paths of harmony. Are these Raw Men strange only because they are different, or because they have crafts and knowledge that we lack, as our forefathers did not know of the working of iron before we learned from the Atjuntja?"
A sign! Yuma realised, at that moment. The Fire Brothers must have been listening after all, and allowed him to see it. He tapped his foot on the stone floor, a polite way of signalling that he wanted to speak.
Wirnugal, fortunately, was alert. "I wish one of my captains to be permitted to speak," he said.
The Lorekeeper glanced around the elders. When none of them objected, he signalled for Yuma to proceed.
Yuma thought for a moment, considering how much information he should reveal. Knowledge was a trade good, often the most valuable of all. Yet he needed to be decisive, and knowledge was of no use if it was never acted on. "These Raw Men have some crafts which we lack. Shipbuilding, of a certainty, and perhaps others. I have seen their mighty vessels in the White City, large enough to make a great-ship seem small. Of the other rumours I cannot speak with assurance, but they are said to have great knowledge of weapons, too."
"How fast are those ships?" asked the captain sitting for the Wolalta elder; Yuma did not know his name.
"I cannot be certain; I saw them only within the harbour. Their sails are large, though. I expect that they can run very fast with the wind. Into the wind, I think that our ships would be more agile."
"How would they have built ships so large?" another elder asked, but the Lorekeeper signalled for silence.
The Lorekeeper said, "These questions should be answered, but not in this time and place. Thank you for your words to the elders, Yuma Tjula."
Nakatta said, "Shipbuilding or not, we must know these Raw Men's interests. Have they comes as wanderers [explorers] or as traders?"
"Both, so far as we can tell," the Lorekeeper said. "They have concluded a trade agreement with the King of Kings. But they came first as wanderers, and wanderers they will no doubt continue to be."
"Will they wander to the island, then?" Nakatta asked.
That question provoked some heated discussion. The Beard led a group of about a third of the elders who exclaimed about the myriad opportunities available for trade with these new Raw Men, whoever they were. Nakatta led a similar number of elders who pointed out the threat of competition, and the dangers of having these outlanders sail directly to the Island.
Yuma wondered about the dangers himself. The only other true seafarers in the world were the Maori, and they did not sail further than the Cider Isle. That had always left the Nangu free to trade and sail elsewhere, whenever they pleased. Without competition, and without threat.
Still, if these Raw Men had such marvellous trade goods, the wealth that they could bring would be fantastic. Even if they had superior knowledge, well, the Nangu could learn from them. They had learned ironworking from the Atjuntja, and, if the old stories were true, other arts of seafaring from the Maori. They could learn again, if they needed.
After the elders had argued for a while, Punalta said, "This debate ignores the essential question. Do these Raw Men know of the Good Man and the Sevenfold Path?"
The Lorekeeper said, "No, not according to the reports. They worship three gods like the Yadji, not two like the Atjuntja. They think that their gods' will is absolute, that nothing men can do will change their destiny. They are even worse than the Atjuntja, apparently, for they believe that all men are depraved and will act to bring discord."
"Then they must be taught the truth," Punalta said. "If we do not teach them to act according to the Sevenfold Path, then the consequences of their disharmony will not be limited to them; they will bring chaos and disruption to us all."
"So, then, we must contact and trade with them," the Beard said.
"And invite them to bring their disharmony to us?" Nakatta answered.
Burra Liwang, who had been silent throughout the long argument, tapped his foot on the stone. An unusual action for an elder, but it got everybody's attention. Burra said, "These Raw Men will come anyway, whether we hide or not. They already know we are here. The Atjuntja would have told them of us even if they had not met our own people. They are wanderers, so they will come. If so, better that we contact them in the west than on our own Island."
As he usually did, Burra had found a way to bring the elders to agreement. With him guiding the discussion, the Council agreed to circumspectly search for a way to contact the Raw Men's trading posts in the western Atjuntja lands, when they were established.
If that failed, then captains would be permitted to sail into the west beyond Sunset Point, if they wanted to brave the endless winds. Any captains who wanted to do so could see if they could sail directly to the Raw Men's homelands. However, the Council ordered that any west-venturing captains must make absolutely certain that they gave the Atjuntja no warning, and that they did not land anywhere on western Atjuntja lands. That would break the Nangu's own trade agreements with the Atjuntja, and in a way which brought no gain.
With that agreement, the Lorekeeper called the Council meeting to an end.
Yuma kept his face carefully impassive, but he now knew what he had to do.
--
[1] The Gunnagal calendar (adopted by the Nangu) divides the year into 30 cycles of 12 days, with an additional 5 or 6 intercalary days at the end of the year. Each of the days and cycles are both named and numbered. So 4.10.382 is the fourth day in the tenth cycle of the year 382, ie Serpent Day in the Cycle of Salt. There are also "months" of 30 days, which overlap this timing and are used for some social and religious purposes, but which are not used in the standard version of naming and numbering days.
[2] Sea purple refers to a dye made from the large rock shell (Thais orbita), a relative of the Mediterranean sea snails that produced purple and blue dyes which were extremely valued commodities in classical times. Even to the Nangu, sea purple is a rare and valuable dye; while there are no formal restrictions on who can wear it, the price it commands means that only elders, the greatest trade captains, and their most favoured wives and mistresses can afford to do so.
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Thoughts?
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Certainly one of the interesting aspects of this TL back on AH.com was the Europeans being confronted by native peoples who actively sought trade and knowledge on their own terms, and who weren't so shattered by disease or slave-raiding as to make any such efforts irrelevant. I look forward to rereading that here.
EBR
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Khazaria
Did you deliberately draw on Judaism as inspiration for this part of the Plirite belief system? I ask purely out of curiosity, because the still small voice is a rarely-spoken-of but important part of our faith.
A very intriguing and fascinating update, I found Yuma and Burra to be particularly enjoyable and interesting characters.
Yuma is very relatable and human, he seems to have a very good head on his shoulders, not praying for resolution but self improvement in the future and holding himself personally accountable, as well as acting to correct these faults when granted the opportunity. It seems he'll be going exploring soon enough, I hope it goes well for him and his crew!
Burra is an excellent mysterious diplomatic figure, with his subtle and extremely polite intro to the conversation highlighting his character and role well. His words were also rather insightful, well put and blunt at the same time.
I assume the three deities is the 'father, son and holy spirit'?
I found the faith portrayed in this especially enjoyable, and what was most interesting was how tightly intertwined it was with their trading culture, the emphasis on harmony makes war or violence a negative, while trade is communicative and ideally brings a boon to all involved and is thus harmonious, its a very solid cultural/theological collection of concepts that mesh well together!
Yuma is very relatable and human, he seems to have a very good head on his shoulders, not praying for resolution but self improvement in the future and holding himself personally accountable, as well as acting to correct these faults when granted the opportunity. It seems he'll be going exploring soon enough, I hope it goes well for him and his crew!
Burra is an excellent mysterious diplomatic figure, with his subtle and extremely polite intro to the conversation highlighting his character and role well. His words were also rather insightful, well put and blunt at the same time.
I assume the three deities is the 'father, son and holy spirit'?
I found the faith portrayed in this especially enjoyable, and what was most interesting was how tightly intertwined it was with their trading culture, the emphasis on harmony makes war or violence a negative, while trade is communicative and ideally brings a boon to all involved and is thus harmonious, its a very solid cultural/theological collection of concepts that mesh well together!