The Aztec Golden Age (and other tales)

Table of Contents


--Bucky

Backstory 1: Alas, Peru

The early Aztecs were not the most distinguished of world cultures. In the years before the Common Era, the world stage belonged to the proto-Dutch, the Romans, the Sumerians, the Carthaginians, and the Mongols. The Aztecs were just one of a quartet of second rate tribes gathered in the forests along the north European coast.


However, the Aztecs were a restless people who benefited from ruthless monarchs. In the year 900bce, for example, the great warchief Qonqermostuph gathered the largest army then known to man and rallied them to the borders of Peru in the Rhein Valley.


By 950bce, upstart Aztec settlements had already begun to encroach on Incan lands in the state of Huamanga. But the lusty Aztecs, by settling the Rheinlands later, had already sacrificed the best farmlands to the Inca. Further, the laggard Incans had failed to fully exploit the lands they had themselves settled. Nearby feral horse herds had fallen under the control of the industrious Dutch of the "nether-lands" while valuable dyes were never harvested.

War alone would remedy these oversights. The lords of Mexico issued threats and demanded new tools and technologies from the more advanced Mediterranean peoples. The blustery Incans would pontificate on their own greatness, but they would not share their knowledge. The Aztecs didn't particularly want their knowledge; they wanted Peru's rich soil.


When the vain Incans refused Qonqermostuph's demands, he unleashed his hordes. They not only overran the prosperous farmlands, they wiped them out. Whole families were slaughtered and whole flocks were plundered and marched east. While some emigrants from inner Mexico moved into the conquered province, the fierce Aztec swordsmen sought first to kill and only secondarily to claim.

After a generation of war, the province of Huamanga was no more and the voracious swordsmen of Mexico were on the march to Vilcas.


Within a hundred years, the less advanced Aztecs had scoured the Incas from their Peruvian colonies and driven them back to the Iberian Peninsula. After new Aztec settlers in Old Peru wrested control of the European horse herds from the Eindhovar Dutchmen, the merchants of Mexico cleverly gained a friendly neighbor by selling wild horses from the Champaign district back to the Dutch.


Closer ties to the powerful Netherlands led quickly to the evolution of Aztec religion into something closer to the pantheons of the Mediterranean peoples they now traded with. Soon the Aztecs believed that if Holland and Flanders could conquer neighbors and hold great empires, so should Mexico.

cya, mañana,
--Bucky

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Backstory 2: Stabs at Greatness

By the 4th Century BCE, the Mexico had realized the dream of a warrior culture able to stand against the world's empires. Skirmishes against barbarians, Mongols, and Indians had hardened the warcraft of the Aztecs. They overran India situated in the land the Aztecs called "Aztlán" and claimed as the homeland from which their people sprang. Many a warlord dreamed of raiding east to capture Russia, but always the timing seemed wrong or the enemy seemed too powerful. That dream would have to wait.


Finally, about 350bce, the strongest empire on Earth, the distant Sumerians came to see these upstart Aztecs needed to be put in their place. They charged across the Mongol steppes and the Italian Desert. Facing an onslaught of the vast and maddened Sumerian hordes the scattered Aztec forces in Aztlan threw themselves in the way of the enemy, bravely self sacrificing and saving the easternmost provinces. By the time a second wave of invaders roared in from the Sumerian left flank, the Aztecs had rallied at the iron mining colony of Lahore and savaged the Sumerian vanguard.


The Sumerian advance party broken and their potential for rewards now miniscule, the Sumerians soon quit the field and agreed to peace terms. The Aztecs had stood down the mightiest empire in Asia. In the centuries to come they would tangle briefly with other great ancient empires like Mongolia and Japan.


But with the coming of new technologies and the "little ice age" and the southward shift in world power, the ancient world cultures were slowing giving way to those of the medieval world. Slowly the old Siberian empires were overrun or reduced by their rivals.

The Incas of far western Europe proved surprisingly adept
at rolling back the Arctic Japanese, calling their new colony New Peru. The new, resolute generation of Inca rulers were determined to make themselves the next great warrior state on the planet. They worked feverishly to develop and expand their new colony situated to the north of Russia. How great a rival to the dominant western powers of Mexico, Carthage, and the Netherlands had yet to be seen.

Around the year 90ad in the Common Era, Aztec forces again clashed with the mighty Sumerian Empire. Always advancing, the new western civilization and the old eastern one tangled across the northern tier of the great Gray Mountains and the Akkadian Plateau. After many bloody entanglements, Aztec raiders managed to isolate and sack a few villages before being themselves obliterated by the more advanced Sumer armies. Again the two empires agreed to peace terms.


The Aztecs had learned a valuable lesson about being overextended. Already their conquest of Indian (Aztlan) and Japanese (East Mexico) lands had stretched the empire dangerously thin. The roads of empire snaked across nearwest Asia between powerful rivals. They were powerful, but they were exposed.

This is GREAT. Good work with these images

After a week with no electricity, I'm finally able to continue my story.

As a side note to last week's hurricane, I no longer admire Dwight Eisenhower.

Backstory 3: Alchemy


In the early Common Era Mexico truly began to join the western community of nations. If their mapmaking skills were not yet perfected, they had at least learned to carry on profitable trade with their neighbors. Aztec settlement of the island of Sardinia further integrated northern Europe into the Mediterranean community (comprised of the Dutch, Carthaginian, Iroquois, and Greek cultures). They began to learn of faraway lands and gradually evolved a modern monarchy capable of unleashing the talents of their nation, but they never quit dreaming and scheming.


In the year 210, the Aztecs reached an accord with the Russians to share the coast of weakening the backward Portuguese peoples who sullied the Tin Islands with their rancid presence. However just as the war commenced, the expansive Sumerians decided they needed to bring Russia, their principal rival, to heel. Always spoiling for a fight with someone, the newly crowned Tlatoani of Great Sumer had learned a new trick this time: grabbing an ally at random and dividing his enemy's attention before striking.


A crude system of alliances was shaping up in the medieval world--a system that by the early modern era would come to plague all the nations with war upon war. However this early in history, the Sumerians seemed untalented in their selection of allies. The tribal bandits of China, for instance, were located so far to the south that Mother Russia was able to mount a powerful, dissuasive defense on its Sumerian front long before the backward mercenaries of the Han Dynasty could arrive on the scene. When the lord Great Sumer turned its greedy gaze to the riches of the Korean subcontinent, he again selected an ally who could not become a rival and again gained negligible results.

The warlike Incans were capable fighters, but too far from the scene of action. Meanwhile the Aztecs had sent forth their great explorers in this generation, always seeking to learn new things about the shape of this world they were in.


Next: Beetyu-Ouiddastic

Backstory 4: Being There

For decades the Aztecs and Portuguese had fussed and feuded to little effect. The expected Russian invasion in the north of Portugal never came, as the Slavs were occupied with their Sumerian War. Finally in the year 290 the warlord Beetyu-Ouiddastec led a two pronged invasion of the Portuguese Isles. Two war bands landed 50 miles north of Lisbon to serve as a distraction and draw out the Portuguese army. The main body of the Aztec assault arrived in the south of Portugal across the Thames River intending to attack the capital once the army was drawn out. Things didn't quite work out that way. In fact, it was a complete disaster.


The Portuguese seemed to have inexhaustible scores of battalions of troops. Having underestimated the enemy's strength, Beetyu-Ouiddastec could only watch first his pathetically small diversionary force get wiped out, followed by the relentless slaughter of two-thirds of his main force. The Portuguese easily maneuvered around the Aztec's defensive position by crossing the Thames further up river before hammering the daylights out of the invaders.


Of course the backward Portuguese lost nearly equal numbers of troops, but they seemed to be able to afford such losses, having no borders that needed protecting--particularly after the Russians cut a surprise peace deal with the islanders, whom they never seemed to have attacked at all. The survivors fled to their boats off the Portuguese coast, ending war between the two civilizations for two generations.

In the intervening years the trend toward monotheism, imported from Russia, radically changed the character of the Aztec people and marked the beginning of the transformation to the medieval era.



But hostilities continued to fester between Mexico and Portugal and in the 340s the Aztecs returned across the Portuguese Channel--this time determined to do the job right. The warlord this time was the invincible Ouakamól, the last of the great polytheists in Mexico. Ouakamól led a force nearly twice as strong as the first invasion, with more pike-bearing defenders and a heavier ratio of mace-bearing assault troops. Ouakamól wasted no troops on distraction forces--he believed in direct assault on the enemy, old school.

Again the counterattack was unrelenting, but this time Ouakamól was ready for them--plus he had more replacement troops streaming in from both Mexico and the distant eastern colonies of Aztlán and East Mexico.

After two decades of war the enemy seemed to become exhausted. Ouakamól resigned a great hero after three decades, each year sending more and more fresh troops into the Thames Valley to die in their bitter assaults on the fortified city of Lisbon. His replacement as general, the Warlord Duorduy, continued Ouakamól's campaign. And after another 10 years of horrid slaughter, the capital city finally broke.


Lisbon fell in 380 and the Colossus was Mexico's. The campaign for the rest of Portugal would move smoother now that what was once the principal city had fallen. However the war had weakened Mexico's defense forces and the rest of the world knew of her vulnerability. In 340 the Russians had already shaken the Aztecs down for 60 gold in order to leave a functioning open borders treaty. That same decade, Inca signed a peace treaty with Korea and began making hostile sounds at their old nemesis.

For the rest of the 4th and into the 5th century, Aztec macemen and swordsmen hammered their way through the villages and shires of Olde Portugal.


Always growing in military might, soon the infantry and defenders of Mexico and its vast colonies had comprised a military force that was nearly equal to Sumeria's. By any accounting Mexico in the 5th century had become one of the world's leading powers.


Next: a few vital stats before the main event

Backstory 5: Vital Stats

There were a large variety of types of governments among the world's nations in the mid 5th Century...


Historians estimate in the year 450, the relative world power status of the greatest nations was:


The Aztec population was 10,261,000 ... 13% of world population, estimated at 78,900,000

But this was a time of relative peace--most fighting involved large nations reducing their smaller neighbors. Among the world's principal powers, only Sumeria and Russia were at war. Among the lesser powers, Egypt and Rome continued their fight, Sumeria was smashing the remnants of the Spanish kingdom in Southeast Asia, and Mexico finally drove the Portuguese rulers off of the larger island and into exile on La Isla Esmeralda.

In the year 470 a small Aztec army arrived on the Emerald Isle to mop up the remainder of the Portuguese ruling class. Among the invaders were a few regiments of ceremonial "jaguar warriors" from the ancient Aztec culture's earliest days. Yet one day in a side skirmish outside the Portuguese exile capital of Emerita, some of these ceremonial jaguar warriors fell into fixed combat with an elite command of spearmen and, against all odds, won the battle.

The boost to the empire's moral was tremendous. The Tlatoani declared the victorious jaguars heroes of the empire. Bishops consecrated them modern saints. The nation's power confirmed, Mexico was now entered what would come to be known as the Aztec Golden Age.

That same year, Inca joined Russia in an alliance against Sumeria as Sumerian veterans from the conquest of Spain begin the long march across Asia to confront the Russian and Incan troops as they invaded.

Ten years into the Golden Age, Portugal's Isla Esmeralda fell to the Aztecs. Having won the Portuguese Isles, the Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan called for peace with the Portuguese. Aztec governors bloodlessly took possession of Portugal's Arctic islands of Evora and Coimbra and the Carib island of Leiria. Only the distant and irrelevant south Atlantic island of Braga retained loyalty to the Portuguese regime, since the surviving royal family members had fled there. But Portugal was over as vital growing civilization and peace had come decisively to Mexico.


And thus ended the first decade of the Aztec Golden Age.

Chapter 1: Recon Jobs


Our story begins in the year 480ad, ten years into the Golden Age of the Aztequi Empire. The great general Axacayatl had just finished the conquest of the Isla Esmeralda, homeland of the ferocious Portuguese sea folk. For the first time in 700 years, the Aztecs had no outright enemies in the world. They were not used to peace (and thus peace would not last).

What was the world's situation in the late 5th century? Having acquired by right of conquest all of Portugal's overseas possessions, the Aztecs became curious about their surrounding world. The Tlatoani sent forth expeditions to tell him about the far parts of the world that had gone so far unexamined.

Nickleberth the Swordsman went to Bulge of Carthage exploring the exotic southern republic along its Mayan border--often called the Diamond Coast for its rare gems and ivory.


Sixtelchec the Spearbearer traveled to Southeast Asia, surveying the ancient Spanish civilization that had been overrun by the imperial Sumerians in the last decade. All that remained of the once noble Spaniards was a primitive, barbaric resistance dwelling the jungles of one of the Spice Islands. The Sumerians were certain they were the wave of the future. This is why they so valiantly fought the Russians and their quaint republican ideals.


Finally the Tlatoani sent Ixmatl the Paladin into the Far East, exploring the lands of the distant, yet friendly, Egyptians, and hoping to learn more of the exotic English who dwelled in a reclusive island kingdom just off the coast from the civilized world.


The Tlatoani called his council. Upon surveying the world's situation, and upon seeing that in order to compete with the powerful Sumerians, the expansive Russians, and the advanced Dutch, Mexico would need more power, more land, more subjects. Plans for shifting to a republican form of government were delayed. "We will have to make war first," the potentate announced, "war upon the upstart Romans."

"The Romans?! Madness!" the council exploded. "Our friends the Egyptians are already seeking to conquer them."

"Of course, because they are weak."

"But all the land Rome occupies is the great desert between Old Mongolia and Iroquoiastan. It's useless!"

"Not entirely useless," the Tlatoani smiled inwardly, "Deserts can contain all sorts of mineral resources. And it will be easy land to conquer."

"And very difficult land to defend thereafter! And we'll have a direct border with Great Sumer, surely not a step to take lightly, sire."

"I do not take this step lightly, gentlemen. We must have more land and more subjects to recruit into our armies. Our empire is thin between East Mexico and our Asian Aztlan colonies. We cannot afford to see half our empire cut off in case there is some invasion in the future. I remind you that while relations with Russia and Iroquoia are good now, in the future we may find ourselves at war. Better to meet them then with a larger empire. The matter is settled; when our armies have moved from the Portuguese Isles to the east, we attack."

And thus ended the second decade of the Aztec Golden Age.

Chapter 2: Jockeying for position

In the 490s, the Aztecs completed many important municipal projects:

the libraries at Tlatelolco, Tlalmanalco, Tzintzuntzin, and Calixtlahuaca...
the marketplaces at Tlaxcala and Huexotla...
and the negotiation of a highly expensive trade deal with Sumeria to gain incense: 195 lump +44 per turn, plus and exchange of national maps.

In world affairs, the people of the Portuguese diaspora signed an alliance with the Russians against Sumeria. The pathetic little one-island Portuguese could not help the Russians against Great Sumer, but the Russians did possibly mean to send Mexico a message: your trade with the orient is not appreciated.

In the meantime, Sumer's distant ally, China, finally brought its early troops into the fight against Russia. Being mere spearmen, however, they had little effect on the Russian towns they attacked.

The Russians feared the war against Great Sumer was getting out of hand--with unknown masses of Chinese mercenaries charging up from southern Africa, they could ill afford to concentrate their troops on their Asian frontier. The Czar agreed to peace terms with Sumeria's emperor, leaving his erstwhile allies Inca and Portugal on their own. It was a dirty deal, but one in which the Russians had little real choice. After finally wiping out the remnants of Spanish civilization, the Sumerian forces would quickly overrun Russia's east and the Great Bear would join the Mongols in oblivion. Once Russia was out of the war Sumer's next move would be to march on New Peru in northeastern Asia.

Sumerian troops moving north from captive Spain to confront their Russian enemies.
Soon they would direct their armies toward another foe.
​

The Incas now desperately stood alone against the Sumerians. They scrambled to find an ally, at last bribing the weakling Romans into a hopeless fight against Sumer. Despite the fact that they were still barely holding their own against Egyptian raiders, the Romans loathed their eastern neighbors and signed the alliance with Inca.

Aztec analysts almost suspected Sumerian or Egyptian agents were in the Roman court secretly manipulating the Latins in their vain attempts at greatness. Against Great Sumer, Rome's demise would be swift and certain. The only question was whether Mexico could grab some of Rome before it all fell.

And thus ended the third decade of the Aztec Golden Age.

Chapter 3: Just a map

The fourth decade of the Golden Age was uneventful, as the people built and grew their culture and developed really charming art pieces. For the turn of the century, Aztecs built the Cathedral of Tenochtitlan, the libraries at Vilcas, Yokohama; and the marketplace at Tamuin. The first Aztec musket units begin to enter the nation's core defenses.


In the war in Asia, the Romans valiantly launched a first, yet pathetic, strike on the Sumerians. Aided by Egyptian ground forces, Sumerian knights counterattacked and took Cumae, although the city of Antium held out.


Next: Operation Anaconda