I'd be happy to have you play either. Keep in mind that if you play Pomerania, you'll be largely influenced by Angst's foreign policy, as he's playing Denmark.
Pick whichever one you prefer!
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While we're on the subject. The southern continent of the New World is a place of war, slavery, and lost expeditions marching into the interior to never return.
The native
Tupan Empire was first contacted by Andalusian explorers rounding the southern straits in 1504. The Andalusians were uninterested in conquest, and provided the Tupans important examples of European technology and domesticated animals in return for trading and mineral concessions. Andalusian advisors soon became common in the empire, and about a quarter of the Empire's elites converted to Mozarabic Christianity.
When the first Norman army of conquest swept down from the Hesperian Basin in 1536, it was narrowly defeated by a Tupan army with Andalusian advisors, who were recovering from the first of several plagues. Their modernization notwithstanding, religious tensions grew throughout the 16th century, particularly between European missionaries and native "Christian" priests and shamans, until an explosion of religious violence resulted in a crackdown on Christianity by the Sapa Tupa in 1579.
The Knights of Alexandria also attempted an abortive expedition to avenge the deaths of many of their missionaries, but this too ultimately failed. Meanwhile, the Andalusians were happily colonizing the western coast of the continent, while Catholic missionaries led by various minor religious orders slowly penetrated the interior of the Penumbre (Rio de la Plata) basin.
Chartered trading companies have dominated much of the eastern coast; one such organization called the
Ikhwan al-Safardiyya, a majority Jewish trading company registered out of Cordoba, has made excellent money in the sugar cane and slave trade for Andalusia.
Their Genoan rivals, cut out of the market, managed to establish a small trading post further to the south, but their power play would ultimately be political as well as economic. In 1604 Genoan and Imperial financiers formed a coalition of minor knightly groups and religious orders, chartering them as the
Circadian Order. The new Order launched a crusade up the Penumbre, allying with Aymara and Guarani native allies, many of whom were Christianized and opposed to the Tupan crackdown on their faith.
They successfully seized much of the alpine, silver producing regions of the empire, and quickly set up an extractive operation to ship it down the Penumbre to the Atlantic, from whence Genoan treasure fleets would take the silver back to the Mediterranean - and the Imperial port of Venice. The operation was a major coup, but it remains extremely fragile due to Andalusian and Tupan opposition, as well as the expense of overland transport. Other major colonial powers may wish to seize control of the operation for themselves.
