Circadia Part One:
There are many names for Mundus Novus. Asphodel. New Canaan. al-Jedidah. The Farisles. While the naming conventions for these vast, uncharted continents (as well as where their borders might truly end) are in flux, many cartographers have begun to refer to the region as a whole as 'Terra Circadia,' a clever Latin invention in a world of many such inventions to indicate the land's presence on the other side of the day.
The southern continent, which is known as either Asphodel or Jedidah, depending on whether or not you speak to a Latin or an Arab, was first discovered by Andalusian traders in 1487, who thought it was an island. Basque and Asturian fisherman had long been aware of other such islands in the North Atlantic, so the presence of other islands was not a great surprise. The first Andalusian expeditions were cautious as befitted their reputation, and were mostly limited to setting up basic trade relations with native groups and then being confused when they all disappeared.
It was not until a few followup expeditions by the Andalusians realized the scope of the "island" that the first Latin expedition was launched, by an Anglo-Normand by the name of Bartholemew Milere. Milere, something of a classicist, charted the great island chain of the Hesperides, named the southern continent Asphodel and the swampy northern peninsula Tartessos.
Circadia rapidly became a world of claims and counterclaims, but the Pope-in-Synod quickly acted to declare these virgin lands the possession of the Church, and theirs to grant. Though this was before the final break of the Ecumenical Wars, many of the metropolitan assemblies failed to acknowledge this claim, but many still did.
One of the last effective measures taken by the Papacy before its removal to Frankfurt in the Ecumenical Wars was the declaration of the Seventh Crusade to take Circadia for Christ. The Knightly Orders of Europe answered the call from Ægypt to Toledo. Honed by constant wars with the Moghuls (and occasional ones with the Andalusian heretics,) their horses and steel toppled vast Mesocircadian native empires, who nonetheless took more than fifty years to entirely subdue, and are not, in any sense, eliminated from the political picture.
The
Knights of Our Lady of Alexandria ultimately asserted their control over the other orders, as the vicious infighting amongst the Knights (and their native proxies) for territory and control began almost before large-scale resistance was extinguished. Over the next several decades, a feudal order gradually began to take hold, along with the formation of a decentralized theocracy in which native aristocrats, properly schooled in the teachings of Christ, could take part in a limited fashion.
The Normans, original exploiters of the Hesperian Chain, were not happy with any of this, and fought for decades to expunge Knightly influence from Asphodel, limiting them to their realm of New Canaan to the north of the narrow peninsula.
The Ecumenical Wars in Circadia featured a massive civil war among the Knights, with most of them supporting the Imperial Papacy but a significant number denouncing the Frankish Emperor's actions as heretical and unjust. Ultimately the pro-Imperial faction won, but not before a rogue knight and his supporters broke off from the Order of Alexandria, their leader declaring himself
Emperor of the Hesperides. In the decades since this borderline-pirate kingdom has existed as a Norman client state for the sake of interdicting Knightly efforts to send silver to the Frankfurt papacy.
Occasional Remonstrant pirates operating from League ports have compounded this problem, further isolating the Knights, who nonetheless, if they were able to properly leverage their fragmented, factional leadership and direct its ambitions, could build the first true Circadian empire.
Meanwhile, the Andalusians sail two and fro, working their dastardly crypto-Mahommedan plots, and supporting and educating various tribal groups to more effectively resist the expansion of their colonial rivals. Arab explorers into the interior of the continent have successfully catalyzed the formation of a Pueblan confederacy who expelled Knightly missionaries in favor of Arab ones, though this tribal alliance remains very fragile.