Pre-industrial Fantasy STGOD OOC/Rules Thread:

[The Romulan Republic]

Apologies for the triple post, but since I see we've got a lot of discussion going on about starting times, let me weigh in on that:

It doesn't matter a great deal to me. This is a very alternate world to our own, and need not follow our calendar. However, since it will be helpful to establish at time of year for the sake of keeping everyone's posts consistent in terms of the setting, let's say the Winter Solstice.

For era, let's say approximately 1750, or whatever the equivalent is under local calendars.

Is that acceptable to everyone?

Edit: And I might as well throw out a question to Jub- presuming we go with my Travellers having migrated through your lands with the assistance of your people, how would you feel about us having some sort of understanding? Not a full alliance, but an agreement to respect one another's borders and sovereignty and limited trade?

[Simon_Jester]

Eh, I'm biased. I'm sticking fairly closely to the limits of what can be done with 1700-era technology plus certain acts of magic, and I don't want to have to be outcompeted too badly.

[Jub]

Presuming we go with my Travellers having migrated through your lands with the assistance of your people, how would you feel about us having some sort of understanding? Not a full alliance, but an agreement to respect one another's borders and sovereignty and limited trade?

I'd expect an uneasy respect at best. The Syilx would have escorted your people through to avoid an unexpected war and to avoid anybody upsetting the spirits, but they wouldn't have liked doing so. Not to mention that, even within the Syilx nation, tribes raid one another for slaves and women so I'd imagine that Traveller's living near the border go missing on a regular basis. At the same time the Syilx, as a whole, would rather avoid having to fight a war so trade and limited reparations for slaves taken would almost certainly be a thing.

The Syilx trade mainly trade natural resources. Things like unnaturally pure nuggets of ore, exceptionally straight and knot free logs, animals of exceptional breeding and the like. They also trade art, especially statues, because art objects are used as focuses to summon totem beasts. Lastly, they're more than willing to trade slaves, possibly even giving back particularly unwilling or troublesome Traveller captives.

-----

@Aasharu:

I know our nations are a bit far apart, but how would you feel about doing fairly heavy slave trading with the Syilx? I'd imagine that it's easier to feed ghouls and vampires with slaves than it is to capture them yourselves.

[Simon_Jester]

It occurs to me that I'm actually ready to make my first story post. It just... FOOMPed in a burst of inspiration; the rest of the story it's a part of is still patchy.

Apologies for the triple post, but since I see we've got a lot of discussion going on about starting times, let me weigh in on that:

It doesn't matter a great deal to me. This is a very alternate world to our own, and need not follow our calendar. However, since it will be helpful to establish at time of year for the sake of keeping everyone's posts consistent in terms of the setting, let's say the Winter Solstice.

For era, let's say approximately 1750, or whatever the equivalent is under local calendars.

Is that acceptable to everyone?

Owww... my calendar begins in 1789 Gregorian.

Don't worry, I can make it work.

[The Romulan Republic]

Eh, I'm biased. I'm sticking fairly closely to the limits of what can be done with 1700-era technology plus certain acts of magic, and I don't want to have to be outcompeted too badly.

Understandable if that's the case. But he did specify that it was relatively minor healing magic, as opposed to the really powerful stuff.

And hey, I'm going to have some very powerful magic for my guys, I'm thinking. But of course, in my case that's merely making up for the fact that my people are both relatively few in number and not really up to date when it comes to gunpowder weaponry.

Jub, while my leaders would probably grudgingly let you be over some unsanctioned slave raiding from your territory, if they felt it was being sanctioned by your leadership things would get frosty real fast. Don't get me wrong, my people aren't knights in shining armour, by and large. But despite their internal divisions, the Travellers in general have very much developed a sense of "Us vs. the world", and their queen in particular has a borderline pathological obsession with preserving her people at almost any cost. They wouldn't fight a full war unless their backs were to the wall, because frankly they're in no shape to, but slavers would be met with arrows from the border patrols, retaliation by private citizens, and possibly even counter raids. Reparations would go a ways towards mitigating that response, but in the scenario you describe, relations would likely be "Cold, mainly because we can't afford for it to get hot".

That said, if some of your people wanted to engage in private/individual trade with some of mine, my leaders would probably be fine with that. Maybe even encourage it as a way of improving relations with our only major neighbour, although my peoples' xenophobia would come into play.

Edit: Simon_Jester, I can be flexible about the calendar. My choice of 1750 was somewhat arbitrary. Perhaps we could compromise on the date?

[The Romulan Republic]

A further note on trade- I don't see my people as being terribly accomadating to strangers wandering through their lands, particularly if slavers are going to be a regular problem. So I would see them establishing one or two "legitimate" trade routes into their territory through which foreigners are allowed to enter. Anyone found away from those routes would be expelled the first time (after being branded), and shot on sight the second time, or something along those lines.

[Jub]

Jub, while my leaders would probably grudgingly let you be over some unsanctioned slave raiding from your territory, if they felt it was being sanctioned by your leadership things would get frosty real fast. Don't get me wrong, my people aren't knights in shining armour, by and large. But despite their internal divisions, the Travellers in general have very much developed a sense of "Us vs. the world", and their queen in particular has a borderline pathological obsession with preserving her people at almost any cost. They wouldn't fight a full war unless their backs were to the wall, because frankly they're in no shape to, but slavers would be met with arrows from the border patrols, retaliation by private citizens, and possibly even counter raids. Reparations would go a ways towards mitigating that response, but in the scenario you describe, relations would likely be "Cold, mainly because we can't afford for it to get hot".

That said, if some of your people wanted to engage in private/individual trade with some of mine, my leaders would probably be fine with that. Maybe even encourage it as a way of improving relations with our only major neighbour, although my peoples' xenophobia would come into play.

The slave trade is officially sanctioned as a major part of the Syilx customs, but leaders are careful not to piss the elves off by sending too many raiding parties to the same places. They also fully expect to get shot at and tend to expect to get raided back, so I could see periodic border wars where I raid you and you counter raid to get your people back and take some revenge. Your people probably take it a lot more seriously than mine do though as the Syilx see raiding as great sport and a way to attain status.

Beyond our stances on elves making great slaves, it sounds like our people's are similar. The Syilx are pretty xenophobic themselves, nobody else worships the spirits correctly, but they generally don't like engaging in costly wars. Defending usually means outsiders tramping through and winding up the spirits, and that means more crops and slaves sacrificed at the next rituals. Any land they take requires months of rituals and sacrifices, on top of keeping the locals pacified, so they tend to try to raid enough to be satisfied but not enough to provoke a war.

On a lower level, I expect there to be plenty of tribes willing to accept cross-border trade along our frontiers. They'd make a big show of welcoming people to their camp, usually involving a night of dancing and feasting, and no fighting would be tolerated until each group had returned home. Among Syilx tribes, this would be where captured slaves are traded back to their tribes and compliments and jeers about how tough or easy another tribe is to raid would be exchanged.

For larger scale trade I'm picturing OTL Hope as the major trade hub between our nations. It has a nicer river leading down from the northern reaches and passes allowing trade from the interior to trek overland. This is where the bulk of the trade between our nations would be done. The rest of our trade would probably be ad-hoc over the border trade, tribes trying to repair hurt feelings by giving back a slave or two and not understanding why you don't steal Sylix people to replace your loses.

Speaking of trade, the Syilx refuse to travel on the ocean, most of them don't even like living within sight of it. In fact, the only reason they keep any ocean border at all is to keep an eye on it. The reason behind this is that the larger the body of water the larger, more powerful, and less easy to please its guardian spirit tends to be. A large lake can already require a half dozen sacrifices a year, so they don't want to think of what an ocean-sized spirit might require. This could open us up to being somewhat reliant on the elves to help them get goods out for trade, though after the first few slave shipments got freed we'd grudgingly return to taking slave trains overland and letting you deal with the non-living cargo.

[Jub]

[damned quote button...]

[Simon_Jester]

Re: the calendar issue.

Well, I can handwave, but I only have good conversions for Gregorian to the calendar I intend to use for years after 1792 Gregorian, actually. Picking a date after that time will make me feel slightly less versimilitude-ey, but have no other negative effects.

[The Romulan Republic]

Jub, while my leaders would probably grudgingly let you be over some unsanctioned slave raiding from your territory, if they felt it was being sanctioned by your leadership things would get frosty real fast. Don't get me wrong, my people aren't knights in shining armour, by and large. But despite their internal divisions, the Travellers in general have very much developed a sense of "Us vs. the world", and their queen in particular has a borderline pathological obsession with preserving her people at almost any cost. They wouldn't fight a full war unless their backs were to the wall, because frankly they're in no shape to, but slavers would be met with arrows from the border patrols, retaliation by private citizens, and possibly even counter raids. Reparations would go a ways towards mitigating that response, but in the scenario you describe, relations would likely be "Cold, mainly because we can't afford for it to get hot".

That said, if some of your people wanted to engage in private/individual trade with some of mine, my leaders would probably be fine with that. Maybe even encourage it as a way of improving relations with our only major neighbour, although my peoples' xenophobia would come into play.

The slave trade is officially sanctioned as a major part of the Syilx customs, but leaders are careful not to piss the elves off by sending too many raiding parties to the same places. They also fully expect to get shot at and tend to expect to get raided back, so I could see periodic border wars where I raid you and you counter raid to get your people back and take some revenge. Your people probably take it a lot more seriously than mine do though as the Syilx see raiding as great sport and a way to attain status.

Sounds about right.

Beyond our stances on elves making great slaves, it sounds like our people's are similar. The Syilx are pretty xenophobic themselves, nobody else worships the spirits correctly, but they generally don't like engaging in costly wars. Defending usually means outsiders tramping through and winding up the spirits, and that means more crops and slaves sacrificed at the next rituals. Any land they take requires months of rituals and sacrifices, on top of keeping the locals pacified, so they tend to try to raid enough to be satisfied but not enough to provoke a war.

Aside from the slavery and sacrifice, and some religious differences, their are some similarities. My peoples' usual attitude is basically "We don't trust or like outsiders, but we're willing to live and let live, and maybe even trade a bit, as long as you leave us alone for the most part."

Unless you've harmed them big time in the past, in which case... well, being immortal means you can hold a grudge for a long, long time. Seeking revenge for millennia is not in any way unheard of. Among the Travellers, their are cultural practices and laws in place to allow a grudge to be formally settled rather than persist for millennia, but they won't necessarily be useful with outsiders, due to cultural differences.

Take the Hyenorcs, for example. Since it looks like they'll end up being the ones who raided my people in the past, you can bet their are a lot of elves dreaming of the day, a few centuries hence, when they're strong enough to go back to the old homeland and kick the Hyenorcs all the way up past the Arctic Circle (sorry madd0ct0r).

This is another reason, as well, why my peoples' civil war was so catastrophic. The grudges created by that war are too many and too deep to easily settle, and thus may percolate for millennia as well.

On a lower level, I expect there to be plenty of tribes willing to accept cross-border trade along our frontiers. They'd make a big show of welcoming people to their camp, usually involving a night of dancing and feasting, and no fighting would be tolerated until each group had returned home. Among Syilx tribes, this would be where captured slaves are traded back to their tribes and compliments and jeers about how tough or easy another tribe is to raid would be exchanged.

Sounds interesting.

For larger scale trade I'm picturing OTL Hope as the major trade hub between our nations. It has a nicer river leading down from the northern reaches and passes allowing trade from the interior to trek overland. This is where the bulk of the trade between our nations would be done. The rest of our trade would probably be ad-hoc over the border trade, tribes trying to repair hurt feelings by giving back a slave or two and not understanding why you don't steal Sylix people to replace your loses.

The trade hub sounds good.

But the elvish idea of tit for tat is more likely to be "you kidnap one of ours', we put an arrow or a sword in one of your's".

Yes, they can be prickly.

Speaking of trade, the Syilx refuse to travel on the ocean, most of them don't even like living within sight of it. In fact, the only reason they keep any ocean border at all is to keep an eye on it. The reason behind this is that the larger the body of water the larger, more powerful, and less easy to please its guardian spirit tends to be. A large lake can already require a half dozen sacrifices a year, so they don't want to think of what an ocean-sized spirit might require. This could open us up to being somewhat reliant on the elves to help them get goods out for trade, though after the first few slave shipments got freed we'd grudgingly return to taking slave trains overland and letting you deal with the non-living cargo.

I was also thinking of trading stuff like fish, whale oil, etc. to your people if your interested. Maybe pearls?

I'm thinking of setting up two major trade hubs. One can be near where you described (my main overland route), and one can be on the southern coast, around where real-world Victoria or the Gulf Islands are. My capital will probably be where Vancouver is, more or less, or perhaps a bit to the north of their.

[The Romulan Republic]

About that whole "settling grudges" thing...

Duelling is a pretty major form of resolving disputes (along with various other forms of competition for lesser disputes/offences). Normally duels are fought with blunted weapons, with the intent being merely to strike the other first rather than to kill.

One may refuse a duel without shame (although this is taken as a concession of whatever the dispute was about). However, attempting to cheat in a duel is one of the most shameful acts one of the Travellers can commit.

[Imperial528]

Apologies for my absence, I was a bit ill the past few days and work didn't help with that at all.

I've just got to read page 8 and I'll be caught up on the thread, should be able to type out some bits of my nation then. Failing that I do have some old (if outdated) documents about a less developed iteration of it.

Interesting that there are more magic-centric civs than I had expected, though.

[Simon_Jester]

One thing I'd like, Imperial528, is a clear idea of what the internal structure of your confederation looks like. You described it as a mix of kingdoms and city states, but which go where?

[Your location is 'New England,' which is promising; it is deeply cool that you seem to be trying something fairly realistic; I've played STGODs where people got weird results because they just drew blobs on a map like so many 1880-era European diplomats dividing up Africa without regard to the terrain they were drawing blobs over]

In particular I would really like to know who, if anyone, controls the areas around OTL Buffalo, New York, and Niagara Falls. And what, if any, canal and other infrastructure has been created in those areas. It makes a big difference commercially and could affect my national policy. Canals are a big deal in this era, and remained so up into and through the 1800s even with railroads to compete against.

Don't get me wrong, your nation's culture is important and will have lots of neat consequences... but on some basic level nobody can interact with people until they know what goes where and who owns what, and in a 'confederacy' of separate and semi-independent states that can be a complicated question.



EDIT:

TRR, one thing that occurs to me is that if elves are nigh-immortal, then either they breed slowly or they kill each other off a lot and few of them survive more than a century or so. Thing is, if elves breed slowly, then when dealing with faster-lived races, "eye for an eye" tactics can result in them being destroyed by attrition. It's a simple, blunt reality- if elves and humans fight, and each side kills 10% of the other, then within twenty years the human population will be more or less back to normal, while the elf population won't even have begun to recover.

So you may see elves holding grudges against whole ethnic groups or otherwise trying to make it utterly impossible for the fast-breeding, swarming humanoids around them to start whittling them down by attrition.

Another possibility is that the Syrax (did I get that right?) have a de facto practice of capturing elves into slavery and ransoming them back right away, and rarely if ever actually keep their prisoners for any length of time. This would seem to be in keeping with the Syrax culture, and it turns a motive for lifelong vengeance ("You kidnapped, enslaved, and carried away my sister to a foreign land!") into something that can conceivably be forgiven ("you kidnapped my sister and treated her with irritating amusement and kept her stuck in a tent in the boonies until we could scrape up a pile of gold bricks!")

[The Romulan Republic]

The elves traditionally would breed slowly. Then the warfare and forced migration came and they started to kill each other (and be killed by others) on a large scale. The problem is that they still breed slowly, so their numbers have plunged. This is really one of the biggest problems my people are dealing with.

I get your point about attrition, but that tit for tat thing makes a certain sense as an alternative to total war. Because while they're xenophobes, they by and large don't take it to the level of actual genocide and, on a more self-interested note, they don't really have the strength for an all-out war with a major power until they've fully resettled and sorted out the massive internal clusterfuck that is their society. But they still can't let something like elves being killed and enslaved go unanswered, for reasons moral, philosophical, and practical (don't want to look weak/like easy prey, especially when you are arguably easy prey).

The obvious solution to the population problem would be to have more sex, but, well, cultural mores take time to change, especially in a traditionalist, sexist monarchy of immortal beings.

Edit: That's not to say some elves aren't going to be looking towards "Kill this whole group" as an option.

[Imperial528]

One thing I'd like, Imperial528, is a clear idea of what the internal structure of your confederation looks like. You described it as a mix of kingdoms and city states, but which go where?

Essentially, were it not for the mageocracy, the entire country would dissolve into countless microstates all scrambling to get the best vassal state relationship with the nearest of the three major royal states. This in turn would lead to wars between the three kingdoms as they try to get the best territory grab out of it. Via economic and diplomatic means, the mages keep this chaos in a semblance of order.

[Your location is 'New England,' which is promising; it is deeply cool that you seem to be trying something fairly realistic; I've played STGODs where people got weird results because they just drew blobs on a map like so many 1880-era European diplomats dividing up Africa without regard to the terrain they were drawing blobs over]

Thanks. A big issue I've run into is trying to figure out what is a river and what is a canal, and whether that canal should exist at all, and if it does, when and why. Most importantly, who paid to build it.

In particular I would really like to know who, if anyone, controls the areas around OTL Buffalo, New York, and Niagara Falls. And what, if any, canal and other infrastructure has been created in those areas. It makes a big difference commercially and could affect my national policy. Canals are a big deal in this era, and remained so up into and through the 1800s even with railroads to compete against.

Given the presence of an economic incentive (sure to exist due to Orion up north with access to the Saint Lawrence and Ohio along Lake Erie) then the canal between lake Ontario and lake Erie surely would exist in some fashion. Though I imagine Ohio doth protest at the way it was built.

EDIT: As would the Erie canal.

Don't get me wrong, your nation's culture is important and will have lots of neat consequences... but on some basic level nobody can interact with people until they know what goes where and who owns what, and in a 'confederacy' of separate and semi-independent states that can be a complicated question.

To any outside observers they would seem roughly united. Think something of an economically stronger but centrally weaker version of the articles of confederation. There is a standard currency of sorts (or at least an accepted exchange rate) with some central economic control, though the ins and outs of the law depends entirely on whose square inch your toes happen to be on.

[madd0ct0r]

Well. He does not have vaccination so there'll still be a significant disease burden. It might be a form of telepathy that takes away pain alone, or it might be as described, slightly heavier duty but not significant in story terms. Perhaps the healer sends a tiny projection of themselves down to battle the bacteria?

. Nobody enjoys writing about their troops dying of infection (citation needed).

[Coop D'etat]

As I've been given some encouragement in the recruitment thread, I'd like to throw my hat into the ring.

The Commonwealth of Assiniboia is based on the drainage basin of Lake Winnipeg, controlling the northernmost portions of the continent's great plains. Its borders are anchored to the west on the continental divide, with the northwest corner at the Yellowhead pass and the southwest corner at Crowsnest pass. Its heartlands are the prairie plains drained by the Saskatchewan, Assinibone and Red Rivers. Its reach also extends over the height of land to dominate a port city on Thunder Bay, as well as trading posts along the shores of Lake Superior (including the strategic choke point at Sault Saint Marie).


I will get more into the details later, but I am envisioning the Commonwealth as an elective monarchy with a permanent parliament. Its people are mainly split between traditional pastorialists in the more arid lands and the more recent introduction of grain agriculture largely tilled by independant freeholders (low population density and high soil fertility prevents the establishment of a serf class). Their military is at the gunpowder stage, but with a understandable emphasis on cavalry and preferring mounted over regular foot infantry for mobility in steppe warfare.

The Commonwealth is fairly outward looking and focused on trade, looking to be the connection between the East and West sides of the continent. Magic holds no particular taboo, but the local practice is inspired by the ever changeable prairie winds leading to a particularly sophisiticated system of weather magic. Likewise, while there is no official state religion, the cult of the Storm God has the greatest and widest spread of devotees.

[Raw Shark]

I'd like to claim OTL Mexico, if that's okay. It's large, but sparsely-populated except for a couple of ports and Tenochtitlan, the capital.

The Aztec Empire stretches from the Rio Grande river to the southern tip of the continent. It is known as a place of rough terrain, strange habits, and bloodthirsty living gods who walk among the people; valued as a trading partner by many but trusted by few.

Religious orthodoxy is not a matter of debate in this land. Heretics who are vocal enough tend to eventually have a god show up and personally kill them, or order the crowd to. The gods claim dominion over the entire world in theory, but don't seem interested in enforcing it outside our borders, in practice, though they claim that the rain will cease to fall and the sun will go out if their thirst is not satiated. There are some who quietly speculate that they are not deities at all, but merely very powerful supernatural beings who enjoy being elaborately worshipped. Very quietly. Nevertheless, the sacrifices go on, and citizens of neighboring lands are sometimes "volunteered" for that purpose, which is always written off as a local skirmish by the Emperor (who reigns for one year in lavish splendor, before being ritually sacrificed and eaten by the Priesthood).

The Empire is not averse to foreign technology, but we do not tend to be early-adopters, and are more innovative in the field of magic. We are particularly known for our good relationship with the Ocean God and various minor wind spirits, making us a major maritime power despite our relatively-primitive ship making practices. Gallons of blood feed the Ocean before a long voyage, but he looks upon us with pleasure and spares the lives of our sailors for it. The wind spirits do not only propel our vessels, but also guide our artillery and even cool our homes. Wind rocks are a major luxury export, particularly to the Gulf Nations. We have also perfected the distillation of the agave plant's sugars through thaumatological methods, and the resulting nectar, which we call Mezcal, is very, very popular in domestic and exotic ports of call.

Internal troubles are rare. The werejaguar nation remains proud of their semi-independence, but has not risen up against the theocracy in over a century. Some of their energetic young males even join the military, often ending up in special forces. Our borders are usually considered more trouble than it is worth to threaten from the North, but we must stand ever-vigilant against what lies to the South. We don't talk about the South.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah on the Healing thing, I'm thinking its fairly basic stuff, removing infections, dulling pain etc. Basically acting like painkillers and antibiotics. You certainly won't see high-level Biomancers regrowing people's severed arms.

Though I am going to keep the ideas Simon gave me like eidetic memory and instinctive knowledge of languages, because those will be real fun to write as well.

[Raw Shark]

Ghetto Edit: We are also a major exporter of marijuana, because of course we are. In addition to its recreational and medical uses, some wizards consider it an enhancement to their ability to practice magic (though some others consider it a counterproductive distraction).

[Raw Shark]

Ghetto Edit #2: I'm thinking things would probably be pretty okay between the Aztecs and the Californians and the Gulf / Caribbean states at sea, but probably a little frosty with the Orions, all things considered... Probably privateers on both sides, at least... On land, nobody takes their eyes off the Aztecs. They're the weird fuckers on the wrong side of the big river. Not aggressive on a large scale, but kind of murderous and not right, either.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm thinking that a number of my Biomancy Healers might do the whole "Doctors without Borders" thing, wandering the continent doing what they can to heal the sick. Kinda like Knight Errants but healing people instead of stabbing them.

[The Romulan Republic]

My people are into healing magic, and probably would have needed the help a lot recently. So that practice might benefit relations between our nations a bit.

[Simon_Jester]

The obvious solution to the population problem would be to have more sex, but, well, cultural mores take time to change, especially in a traditionalist, sexist monarchy of immortal beings.

Offer whatever economic incentives the monarchy has to those who have more children?

One thing I'd like, Imperial528, is a clear idea of what the internal structure of your confederation looks like. You described it as a mix of kingdoms and city states, but which go where?

Essentially, were it not for the mageocracy, the entire country would dissolve into countless microstates all scrambling to get the best vassal state relationship with the nearest of the three major royal states. This in turn would lead to wars between the three kingdoms as they try to get the best territory grab out of it. Via economic and diplomatic means, the mages keep this chaos in a semblance of order.

Darn. Stupid wizards, never letting us have any fun.

[Your location is 'New England,' which is promising; it is deeply cool that you seem to be trying something fairly realistic; I've played STGODs where people got weird results because they just drew blobs on a map like so many 1880-era European diplomats dividing up Africa without regard to the terrain they were drawing blobs over]

Thanks. A big issue I've run into is trying to figure out what is a river and what is a canal, and whether that canal should exist at all, and if it does, when and why. Most importantly, who paid to build it.

Post here, me and (even more so) TimothyC can help. The really critical canals are the Erie Canal connecting Albany on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York. Building this canal required a coordinated effort by the entire state of New York, including extensive use of gunpowder to blast through the sixty foot high Niagara Escarpment. Look it up on Wikipedia.

Given that the Erie Canal probably runs through the territory of more than one of the constitutent states of your confederacy, I would be... legitimately impressed by it as a national achievement... if you managed it.

The other question mark is the Welland Canal, which bypasses Niagara Falls, so that ships can sail up the St. Lawrence and through Lake Ontario onto Lake Erie. Look up the history of that canal too.

In particular I would really like to know who, if anyone, controls the areas around OTL Buffalo, New York, and Niagara Falls. And what, if any, canal and other infrastructure has been created in those areas. It makes a big difference commercially and could affect my national policy. Canals are a big deal in this era, and remained so up into and through the 1800s even with railroads to compete against.

Given the presence of an economic incentive (sure to exist due to Orion up north with access to the Saint Lawrence and Ohio along Lake Erie) then the canal between lake Ontario and lake Erie surely would exist in some fashion. Though I imagine Ohio doth protest at the way it was built.

EDIT: As would the Erie canal.

Honestly, Ohio probably wouldn't complain. It's not that we don't have wizards, it's that we don't trust them with anything likely to kill other people and/or affect their souls.

Of course, to us the Erie Canal is the Grand Imperial Canal running from Louisville (OTL Cincinnati) to Toledo (OTL Toledo) along the historical route of the Miami and Erie Canal. And it was excavated using proudly mundane methods such as masses of peasant conscript labor with big shovels and wheelbarrows, although the clergy of the Church of the Living Stars were good enough to provide a lighting system so the canal is at least semi-operable at night time.

To us, the OTL Erie Canal would be something like the "Grand Atlantic Canal." And we are SO glad you managed to build it, because it means we have a way to get cargo into the Atlantic Ocean that doesn't pass through Orion!

The existence of the Welland Canal would also be nice, and probably more likely because it was easier to build. Historically I believe it was constructed by a private company, whereas digging the Erie Canal would be a fairly grand-scale effort for your confederacy's coordinated resources. Which is not to say managing it wouldn't be awesome.

Don't get me wrong, your nation's culture is important and will have lots of neat consequences... but on some basic level nobody can interact with people until they know what goes where and who owns what, and in a 'confederacy' of separate and semi-independent states that can be a complicated question.

To any outside observers they would seem roughly united. Think something of an economically stronger but centrally weaker version of the articles of confederation. There is a standard currency of sorts (or at least an accepted exchange rate) with some central economic control, though the ins and outs of the law depends entirely on whose square inch your toes happen to be on.

So... like the Confederate States of America, only without the slavery? Or for that matter with the slavery, for all I know you guys practice slavery?

[Ohio has serfdom, which is somewhat different; serfs are a form of real estate improvement rather than being a form of livestock]

As I've been given some encouragement in the recruitment thread, I'd like to throw my hat into the ring.

The Commonwealth of Assiniboia is based on the drainage basin of Lake Winnipeg, controlling the northernmost portions of the continent's great plains. Its borders are anchored to the west on the continental divide, with the northwest corner at the Yellowhead pass and the southwest corner at Crowsnest pass. Its heartlands are the prairie plains drained by the Saskatchewan, Assinibone and Red Rivers. Its reach also extends over the height of land to dominate a port city on Thunder Bay, as well as trading posts along the shores of Lake Superior (including the strategic choke point at Sault Saint Marie).

Gadzooks!

That is significant!

Hm, we have reason to think that the historical copper mines of Michigan's Upper Peninsula are already in operation, and given how historically valuable and rare good copper was in the era, they'd likely be one of the (if not THE) major supplier of copper to Ohio, Orion, and other parts of the East.

Do you own them, if not, do you levy tolls on copper passing Sault St. Marie?

[Eternal_Freedom]

The obvious solution to the population problem would be to have more sex, but, well, cultural mores take time to change, especially in a traditionalist, sexist monarchy of immortal beings.

Offer whatever economic incentives the monarchy has to those who have more children?

This is what Orion does, I did mention a "breeding program" to try and get more Technomancers in the population, since it's becoming more and more useful.

Actually, hell, mages in general are given incentives to have children, the ultimate goal being a majority of the population demonstrating Mage abilities within 150 years.