The Great Negotiating Table

[Provolution]

One problem, the last campaign cost Head Serf the entire interest for the game.
Also, there is an interest for intersite, as well as better space.

 

[Perfection]

Intersite gives a bit more flexibility but at the cost of a lot of people, it's just not worth it.

 

[LightFang]

I don't get why it can't just be held here. This is a perfectly good space, and we can even bring OTers here.

 

[Provolution]

Intersite is great for handling various depths of the game. I notice a boost as we moved to a new site with a higher activity level.

 

[Perfection]

That boost is fleeting, very fleeting. Intersite is bad, very bad.

New forums will get a fair boost in participants but then will starve.

 

[Provolution]

From experience, I know that the other sites posters are reliable posters.

 

[Perfection]

Yeah, but there's like 4 of them. That's not much fresh blood and it's coming at the cost of cutting off CFCers, especially with the administration invite needed.

 

[Provolution]

It is going to work, and there will be a minimum of disruption internally. We just see how this site works.

 

[Perfection]

Forgive me, but I don't believe you.

 

[Provolution]

Well, we can try to run each our game, you here, and I there, and we will see what happens. I need to see this game come together well before I even consider folding my cards. Our game will go on full speed, till this is even worth considering joining up again. I have been here since July, and when I had some players contacting me to join their site, I said yes.

When this forum game got an operating moderator, a good GM, some more forum space and good and defined game rules, we may drop our game, and join this. What we are not doing, is quitting now to argue around here in one liners if it works or not.

 

[Perfection]

That's probably not the best idea. We'd end up splitting the group even more then it already is, Provo.

We can't do this without unity (because we wont get enough participants) and having you constantly shifting around without contacting the GMs is making it insanely hard to work things out for someone who doesn't have 6 hours a day to work on this. First you became a GM, then you quit, then you said you deleted your stuff, then you have posted on another forum. We can't work like that, Provo.

We long ago agreed to have this here. I fought tooth and nail for this forum. We have the participants, all we need is for the drama to end and us to get together and work this out.

 

[CCA]

We should have a vote man

This is a democracy after all not some mafia run oligarchy

 

[Perfection]

Do we have to do this again?!

Can't we just have a simple game here for us OTers?

Why do we keep having to fight Provo for the things that were agreed on long ago?

 

[Japanrocks12]

Yeah, we should get every person here. This is after all, the great negotiating table. I, for one, am sick of something this great being spoiled because our petty personal problems.

 

[Provolution]

Well, I am not needed here, and you said you would do fine without. I am not a membership list that you just ask to join the game, empty folder and leave again. We got a seriously harsh exit, and we would not even be talking if another game was up and running. We tried to discuss this not from temporary strength, but for long term reason.

Also, you have not addressed a long series of points in this thread, but rather seek us to simply fold our cards and give up. You would rather argue here, than fixing up the Factbook you now run. You got the facts even in both your PM box and this very thread.

EDIT: Yes, why do you have to fight me, when you agreed on this long ago. We are to play the other game with the rules we want ourselves, not be forced to play a game we do not like. United there is a risk, separated there is a risk.

 

[Perfection]

Yeah, because I spend all my time here trying to keep model parliament from splitting into tiny pieces. And I said we'll do fine without you, but if you're going to try to take everyone with you then that's a whole different animal something that I need to address.

I've been PMing Abgar and he seems like he'll be able to do the stats.

 

[Provolution]

We are not taking everyone with us, merely the ones that were shortchanged on game-rules and so on. I think you and Abgar can run this all good.

Also, we got a whole lot of other new members. There is a registry list that tells more than the first recon of our site did.

 

[Perfection]

Well, they are people who would be here if not for your forum, so it becomes my problem.

 

[Provolution]

Keeping a lot of people here is not an end in itself, if they got a fundamentally different view of a good gaming experience. We are not running an OT-game, not abstract time, not accepting flaming and several other differences.

I see that no GM package has been put forward, and we managed to set up a decent game in a short period of time. You may also need to rewrite the history, as key players integral to the history left. Isthmus City for example, is not what it was 2 weeks ago (only deleted city). The long term history has also changed for us, as we got some new players.

All in all, I went to this thread for a consensus or compromise discussion, but we only get the predicament of failure, submit or be destroyed. Almost none of the points we posted were addressed.

 

[Provolution]

Since we at the Model State see that this game is floundering and not generating background at all, we kindly donate our history to CFC. Hopefully the players will appreciate this, and develop more stories, like writing their own city guides and other things.

THREE DISCOVERERS OF CIVILITAS(1648-1805)

(No plagiarism please, even though I will credit Wikipedia and H4ppy for good inputs, as well as other citizens)

AGE OF DISCOVERY

RUSSIAN DISCOVERIES - DESZHNYOV-BERING (1648-1778)

Spoiler :

1648/49: The Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnyov find the islands by accident, blown off course during explorations in the Antilles islands. He managed to map the location, but the circumstances under which the map was made, made the map hard to read. and name them. Dezhnyov claims the islands for the Russian Czar, leaves a pile of stones and heads back for Moscow, where he dies of ill health in 1673.

As Imperial Russia struggled with conquering the vast Siberia, which took most of the colonial efforts. From the death of Dezhnyov, it took almost a hundred years before the next Russian and first European expedition came with the Bering expedition 1733-43. The Danish explorer Vitus Bering was working for Imperial Russia, assisted by his deputy, Russian Alexei Chirikov. They set sail from Russia in June 1741. After having mapped Southeast Alaska in July. When the summer came to an end, they decided to investigate the old tale of the islands farther south found by Dezhnyov, and followed a rewrite of his old map. They found the northeastern location of the island where Dezhnyov was about a hundred years before, and even found his marker. This time, the Russian expedition did more thorough surveying of the island, and found the place to be a good location for a settlement.

BRITISH DISCOVERIES - COOK (1778-1779)

Spoiler :

On his last voyage, Cook once again commanded HMS Resolution, while Captain Charles Clerke commanded HMS Discovery. Ostensibly the voyage was planned to return Omai to Tahiti; this is what the general public believed, as he had become a favourite curiosity in London. After returning Omai, Cook travelled north and in 1778 became the first European to visit the Hawaiian Islands, which, in passing and after initial landfall in January 1778 at Waimea harbour, Kauai, he named the "Sandwich Islands" after the fourth Earl of Sandwich, the acting First Lord of the Admiralty.

COOKS EXPEDITIONARY MAPS

Spoiler :

[/IMG]

BRITISH LANDING

Spoiler :

By chance, he sailed for the Bering Strait, but stumbled onto Civilitas in 1778, March 15, an island almost as large as Britain itself. He argued for calling the island Citannia, but landed on calling it "Civilitas" after conferring with one of the ships scientists. He started by exploring the island from Karmel beach (Named after the mountain Carmel in Israel), and then followed the Western Coast for the next weeks, exploring the Isthmus Plain uniting the northern and southern half of the island and going farther north for well over a week and stumbled onto a lesser island, he sailed around, before he moored at Northshore, and found a deserted indigenous settlement in what was to become Portsborough in the future. He claimed Civilitas for the British Empire,
and made proper maps of the area.

From there, he travelled east to explore the west coast of North America, landing near the First Nations village at Yuquot in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, although he unknowingly sailed past the Strait of Juan de Fuca. He explored and mapped the coast from California all the way to the Bering Strait, on the way identifying what came to be known as Cook Inlet in Alaska. It has been said that, in a single visit, Cook charted the majority of the American North West coastline on world maps for the first time, determined the extent of Alaska and closed the gaps of Russian (from the West) and Spanish (from the South) exploratory probes of the Northern limits of the Pacific.

The Bering Strait proved to be impassable, although he made several attempts to sail through it. He became increasingly frustrated on this voyage, and perhaps began to suffer from a stomach ailment; it is speculated that this led to irrational behaviour towards his crew, such as forcing them to eat walrus meat, which they found inedible. (It has also been suggested that Cook had been exhibiting irrational behavior since early in the voyage).

Cook returned to Hawaii in 1779. After sailing around the archipelago for some eight weeks, he made landfall at Kealakekua Bay, on what is now the 'Big Island' of Hawaii. There is some discussion by recent historians that Cook's arrival coincided by quirk of fate with a season of worship for the Polynesian god Lono, (Makahiki). Indeed the form of Cook's ship HMS Resolution (more particularly the mast formation, sails and rigging) resembled certain significant artifacts that formed part of the season of worship. Similarly, Cook's clockwise route around the islands before making landfall resembled the processions that took place in a clockwise direction around the island during the Lono festivals. For these reasons the arrival, it is thought, led to Cook's (and to a limited extent, his crew's) initial deification by the natives, who treated him with great reverence as possibly an incarnation of Lono himself. This interpretation of the natives' reaction, though, has been called into question.

The main priority for the British Empire in the Pacific was to colonize the Australian continent. This meant that Australia captured the interest, and Civilitas were left for some time.

RUSSIAN REDISCOVERIES - BARANOV (1779-1805)

Spoiler :

As Imperial Russia was making her way east, it took another fifty years or so before the Russians decided to colonize east of Kamtchaka.
In 1790, Shelikhov hired Alexandr Baranov to manage his Alaskan fur enterprise. Baranov moved the colony to the northeast end of Kodiak Island, where timber was available. The site later became what is now the city of Kodiak. Russian members of the colony took Koniag wives and started families whose names continue today, such as Panamaroff, Petrikoff, and Kvasnikoff.

In 1795, Baranov, concerned by the sight of non-Russian Europeans trading with the Natives in southeast Alaska, established Mikhailovsk six miles (10 km) north of present-day Sitka. He bought the land from the Tlingits, but in 1802, while Baranov was away, Tlingits from a neighboring settlement attacked and destroyed Mikhailovsk. Baranov returned with a Russian warship and razed the Tlingit village. He then built the settlement of New Archangel. It became the capital of Russian America and today is the city of Sitka, which covers what was previously the Mikhailovsk area.

As Baranov secured the Russians' physical presence in Alaska, the Shelikhov family continued to work back in Russia to win a monopoly on Alaska's fur trade. In 1799, Shelikhov's son-in-law, Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov, had acquired a monopoly on the American fur trade from Czar Paul I. Rezanov then formed the Russian-American Company. As part of the deal, the Tsar expected the company to establish new settlements in Alaska and carry out an expanded colonization program.

It was this expanded colonization program that gave the Russians the necessary resources to colonize Civilitas. One of Emperor Alexander Is first decisions was to let Baranov found the deepwater port of Gavan Glubokoye, "Deep Port" in Russian, which became the first non-indigenous settlement on the island. Founded 1805, this small but thriving port boasted some 2 000 Russian souls, and was one of the larger settlements in the Russian Pacific at that time. Yet, the Napoleonic Wars took most of Europes attention, and no further attempts at colonizing the islands took place before 1821.

AGE OF EARLY COLONIZATION - RUSSIAN AND BRITAIN (1805-1834)

Jevgennij Onegin - 1805-1834

Spoiler :

1805-1821, Gavan Glubokoye developed well, and the Russian Governor Jevgennij Onegin, managed to understand the local politics of the northwestern part of the island. He managed to play the two rivaling tribes against each other in the period 1810-1815. On the other side of the Eart, with Imperial Russia seeing their own capital sacked and continuously in danger of Napoleon, Onegin knew he had to be resourceful on his own.

He knew that the different tribes were struggling over an important part of the river, and they decided promptly to help the Marijak tribe, which also happened to be a useful source of labor, for vodka, guns and tools in exchange. The other tribe, the Terijak tribe was wiped out by the Cossacks and Marijaki warriors. Then the dark surprise came to the Cossacks, the Marijaki warriors ritually digested the Terijaki dead to celebrate their victory.
The Russian orthodox priest, Nikolaj Nevski, decided that they had to be christened and Russified, which took place. In exchange for "lifting" up their civilizational standards to Russian levels, the Russians allowed them to name their town, to be built by Russian help, Marijak. The Terijaks thus waned in history, as everyone seemed to want to forget.

Originally, the Marijak nation was centered along the *** river. The main settlement was at the intersection of the three rivers, located on a virtual island. This is now referred to as the Rigarmata District of the city of Marijak. While the Marijak elders were pleased with the improvement to infrastructure that the Russians provided in the 1820s, they insisted that they have a say over what was being built on their ancestral lands. In addition, they protested the strange concept of ownership the Russians were advocating. The Russians, however, were not about to let them control the whole area, for the ancestral lands covered virtually the entire river area. Eventually, the two parties reached a compromise: The Russians would give the Marijak tribe a reservation, presented as an official ownership of the eastern portion of the small island, in exchange for the Marijak dropping the subject for good. The Marijak would then have local authority in the sense that they could choose who they sold their land to, or choose not to sell it at all.

For a time, the Marijak were perfectly content to keep the land as it was, and it became a protected reservation for the tribe. However, as the city expanded, new developments were deflected around the reservation, which posed organizational problems for the city government. It became clear that the reservation could not last forever without severely hampering the growth of the city. As the pressure mounted to sell off some of the land, the Marijak elders decided that it would be in the tribes best interest to learn the basics of real estate so that they would not be swindled by the Russians.

Lord Morris "Mini" Littleton - 1823-1834

Spoiler :

The British Empire, having observed the Monroe Doctrine took place, and now having a proper hold on both Canada and Australia after their loss, they took a proper look on the globe to see if they could unearth yet a profitable colony. Civilitas sprung to mind, as they have gotten the idea that the Russians had an operation there. Through spies, they have gotten to know about the significance of Gavan Glubokoye, and they decided to go for the unsettled island in order to avoid political complications.

As the industrial revolution was taking pace, the prospectors sent 1823 had found large deposits of coal on the northern island, which was named Cook Island, as they considered him, not a brute Russian, to be the sole discoverer of that island. A rising British industrialist. Lord Morris "Mini" Littleton thought that being in control of such a great coal deposit was excellent, as good as the almost smokefree Cardiff Coal. There were also iron deposits there in abundance, and he could foresee a Pacific Sheffield as his little Empire, with his own Cutlery Hall to count his guineas. Portsborough was settled 1829 and the town grew relatively fast, due to the bountiful mining deposits. The absence of indigenous people on the island, which had died out due to some mysterious disease, made the colonization easier than the Russian mainland.

The Gavan Glubokoye and Portsborough developed a sort of mutual understanding and developed internal trade. The Russians traded fur, potatoe crops, treated meat, copper and Vodka for coal, iron ingots, tools, fish and Dry Gin. By 1834, the relationship between the communities of Portsborough, Gavan Glubokoye and Marijak was growing.

AGE OF INDUSTRIALIZATION PROPOSAL (1834-1851)

CAUSES OF NEW IMMIGRATION - 1834-1851

Spoiler :

The Belgian Revolution was a conflict in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands that began with a riot in Brussels in August 1830 and eventually led to the establishment of an independent, Roman Catholic and neutral Belgium (William I, king of the Netherlands, would refuse to recognize a Belgian state until 1839, when he had to yield under pressure by the Treaty of London).

The Netherlands overthrew Napoleonic rule in 1813. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the names "United Provinces of the Netherlands" and "United Netherlands" were used. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna created a kingdom for the House of Orange-Nassau, combining the United Provinces of the Netherlands with the former Austrian Netherlands, in order to create a strong buffer state north of France. Symptomatic of the tenor of diplomatic bargaining at Vienna was the early proposal to reward Prussia for its staunch fight against Napoleon with the former Habsburg territory. Then, when the British insisted on retaining formerly Dutch Ceylon and the Cape Colony, which they had seized while the Netherlands was ruled by Napoleon, the new kingdom of the Netherlands was compensated with these southern provinces. The union, called the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, harkened back to 16th-century dynastic possessions but proved to be unworkable in the 19th century.

The Belgians rebelled, got their new king nominated by the British Empire, and the war with the Netherlands lasted for almost ten years, until Netherlands eventually gave up Belgium. This created several hardships for the citizens in Gent and Antwerp.
The independance of Belgium was a disaster for the important industrial city of Gent. In 1829 the cities cotton industry processed 7,5 million kg cotton, while in 1832 this was only 2 million kg. A direct consequence of the break-up was unemployment for most of the laborers and if you still had a job you earned about 30% of your salary from 1829.
For the harbour city of Antwerp the disaster was even bigger. The trade with the colonies was reduced to zero en the amount of ships that entered the port was dropped to 398. (in 1829 a total of 1030 ships entered Antwerp with a cargo of 129 thousand tons, double the amount of the harbours of Rotterdam and Amsterdam together.)

At the same time, in the Cape Town Province, several Dutch semi-nomadic settlers, named the Boers, began what was known as the Great Trek, where they moved north from the Cape Province and deep into South Africa, where they founded the Free States of Oranien, Transvaal and Natal. There were in general a major migration of Dutch at this time.

Johannes van Hardenkamp - 1834-1851

Spoiler :

Van Hardenkamp was originally a Dutch East India Company that worked as a clerk in Cape Town, until the British took over the city by the turn of the 19th century, and when the Company was dissolved and all land transferred to Batavia, then Britain. He decided to go back to Netherlands. As an old man, he saw the Belgians break lose from the United Provinces, and he felt appalled. As he ran a ship-yard in Antwerp, and doing diamonds on the side as a gem-cutter, he had gotten to know about Portsborough and a Russian port of some adventurous island mid Pacific, far away from the war and bad business. He also got to know that the southern part of the island was wilderness and some difficult indigenous people. Having been a harsh and warlike Boer in the Cape Province, he knew how to acquire new land from someone who could not protect it. He could easily recruit unemployed cottonmillers, seamen, shipbuilders and others struck by the recession, and the military skills to protect his enterprise he acquired from South Africa, where he persuaded about a thousand hardened Boer families, with good fighting men, to join him for the enterprise in Civilitas.

Gottlieb Karmel - 1834-1851

Spoiler :

He aligned himself with the wealthy investor Gottlieb Karmel from Bremerhaven, of an old Hanseatic family, who happened to have investments in Antwerp. Karmel provided the financing of the expedition and seeing how Gent and Antwerp when, they assembled eight schooners from Antwerp, sailed past Cape Town to pick up some seasoned Boers and sailed straight east, sailing through Dutch East Indies picking up yet more specialists for the new colony. They established each their fort in the south part of the island. Fort Karmel was founded in a beautiful scenic bay, whereas Fort van Hardenkamp was formed at the delta by the Isthmus in 1834.

The Cape Pacific Free State - 1834-1851

Spoiler :

They made sure that the border to the Russian side was marked up, as the remainder of the island was in Russian possession. The Dutch and North German settlers then created a "free state", modeled after the ones seen in Transvaal, Natal and Oranien Freistaat. It did not take time before the settlers came into conflict with the indigenous population. Having heard about heavy fighting in the Northern Province, the newcomers took no chances. The seasoned rangers from South Africa, the colonial mercenaries from Batavia and war veterans from the Belgian Independence war did their part in cleansing the territory for natives. Those who were not integrated, intermarried and subdued, were killed off or fled to the less developed central part of the island, north of the Isthmus. The Isthmus faced the occasional raid from the north, and gradually developed a fortress mentality, feeling that they guarded the south from the northern threat.

Donald Meunmil - 1846-1854

Spoiler :

At the same time, 1846, in Scotland, the Meunmil Clan was in the middle of a bloody feud with the McDorgan Clan. They had possessions in Ireland which lost their value overnight due to the Potatoe Famine, and now they were yet again in a bloody feud over a critical pasture.
Hearing about beautiful pastures from a local Dutchman coming from the colonization of a Pacific island, the Meunmils decided they wanted to see the place. Donald and Regan Meunmil brought with them twenty strong men, went to Civilitas and found the Southern part of the island very much to their liking. Observing that the Dutch, Boer Dutch, Flemish and Hansa-Germans had disposed with the local indigenous population, they asked for permission to settle the highlands, in which they were granted by both van Hardenkamp and Gottlieb Karmel.
Fort Meunmil was founded 1848, and the balance of the three communities made for a stable Free State. Donald Meunmil,the clans leader, now decided there was no more feuding, but the quest for the good life. This is why Fort Meunmil became the oasis of good isolated living that it became, and is one of the explanations why these are more peaceful than the Isthmus and Karmel people.

British-Russian Development - 1834-1854

Spoiler :

In the same period, the British-Russian relations went reasonably well, until the point where they began to compete for domination in Central Asia, where Persia and Afghanistan became buffers as they both expanded into Central Asia from each their side, in Rudyard Kiplings Great Game. Gradually, the souring of relations spread from London and Moscow to Portsborough and Gavan Glubokoye. The growth of the population went to a standstill as both Imperial Britain and Imperial Russia colonized wildly these years. This also affected the sense of being, and of the relations of the island. Governor Onegin felt at a loss, he did not have the resources or manpower to venture farther south, and he could not halt the Dutch-German, and later Scottish colonies to spring up in the South. With horror, they observed indigenous survivors from the south coming north with chopped off limbs, blinded by musket shots and general war wounds, if not mutilations. Onegin did not dare to set up a border fort to counter Fort van Hardenkamp, and decided to only let a handful of small Russian villages grow up south of Marijak.

When the German revolutions came in 1848, yet another wave of Germans came to Karmel, which now changed status from fort to town, and Karmel grew to become the largest town on the islands at this time. From 1848 to 1851, the population there went from 1500 souls to 18 000 townsmen. Karmel prospered, and several prominent buildings sprung up. Fort von Hardenkamp lagged a bit behind, as the conflict with the surviving indigenous guerrillas took their toll, burning down outlying homesteads, and occasionally raiding the fort. This was the situation when another war took place in Europe.

AGE OF BONANZA (1853-1905)

THE CRIMEAN WAR AND HOW GREAT BRITAIN GOT THE CENTRAL PROVINCE

Spoiler :

The Crimean War (1853–1856) was fought between Imperial Russia on one side and an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. Most of the conflict took place on the Crimean Peninsula, with additional actions occurring in western Turkey, the Baltic Sea region, and in the Russian Far East, among other places in Civilitas.

The Crimean War is sometimes considered to be the first "modern" conflict and "introduced technical changes which affected the future course of warfare."

Pacific

Spoiler :

Minor naval skirmishes also occurred in the Far East, where a strong British and French Allied squadron under Rear Admiral David Price and Contre-admiral Febrier-Despointes besieged a smaller Russian force under Rear Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula. An Allied landing force was beaten back with heavy casualties in September 1854, and the Allies withdrew. The Russians escaped under snow in early 1855 after Allied reinforcements arrived in the region.

Being cut off the mainland, the situation between Portsborough and Gavan Glubokoyoe came to a standstill. The Russian cossacks, excellent soldiers and unbeatable on horseback dominated the island, whereas the British fleet dominated the seas out of Portsborough. The two towns had been stockpiling munitions, food and other resources since the war began, but no action took place before Putyatin withdrew and thus could not offer any hope of relief to Gavan Glubokoye.

The Battle of Borodino Pass - 1855, 14 October

Spoiler :

Governor Onegin was now replaced by Governor Bukharov, a grizzly, huge, endearing yet frightening Russian leader. When a regiment of Redcoats under Colonel Peter Ashcrombe landed on the island in 1855 in the unpopulated natural harbor of Astoria, he immediately set up an improvized wooden fort. Assuring the neutrality of the Southern Free State, he maneuvered around the Islands East side, in order to avoid the plains on the West side, where Cossack cavalry would dominate. He decided to go through the major pass where New Gorgie is located today, and march in dual column down that valley, to surprise the Russians from the flank, where the Russian Cavalry was holding Marijak. Outmaneuvering the Cossack Cavalry, he hoped for a quick fight against the numerically inferior Russian Garrison.

However, Bukharov was a real survivor of a bear, and he had already taking precautions with the now more civilized, not that civilized, Marijaks and a group of Russian volunteers. As the British Regulars came down the Valley in a narrow pass between two forested hills, an avalanche of lumber was suddenly thrown at them. Losing the formation and falling on each other, most of the Regulars were killed by axes, poles, spears, Vodka bottles, picks and shovels.
The Marijaks and the Russian scouts had hidden well, and the ambush was complete. Colonel Ashcrombe died with most of his men, and only the field doctor came back to Fort Astoria on a wounded mule. No prisoners were taken. This powerful deterrent made Portsborough sign a peace treaty with Bukharov, who made sure the colony remained Russians. But as Russia was the losing side of the war, Bukharov agreed to secede the southern half, with the handful Russian villages, to the British Crown, all the way from a hill south of Marijak to Port Isthmus.

Morris Littleton had two options, either further develop Portsborough and the mining/metal community, or to settle in the southern British region. However, some of the last immigrating workers, coming from London, had met a German with the name Marx. These seemed to be a challenge to the mining tycoon, and they simply refused to leave their homes, and they asked for a wage raise, when at it. Littleton conceded, and decided to stay on Cook Island.

Astoria and Sir Victor Nelson - 1861-1902

Spoiler :

The British Admiralty, now controlling half of Civilitas, decided to be quick to colonize the Central Province. Fort Astoria, being the best natural harbor in the entire island, was promptly expanded to become the town Astoria. Astoria was thus founded in 1861, after due planning and preparations. The beginning of the Civil War in the US came very timely, and migration went here in place of the US.

Astoria quickly grew in size, from a wooden fort, through a small town to become the first small city on the island. All this took place from 1861 to 1900, about 40 years uninterrupted growth. In order to fuel this growth, they need more immigrants, but they wanted Astoria to remain primarily British, as the city now was competing with Portsborough for regional leadership.

The town of Al Hakimah was founded in 1873 by Bengali Muslim indentured servants who had been brought to Civilitas by British colonists. For several decades, small numbers of Bengalis had gathered together in the area north of the British settlement of New Birmingham upon the termination of their indenture contracts; after the abolition of indentured servitude in 1890, thousands of Bengalis from across the islands came to the settlement, where they could preserve their freedom, their Bengali language, and their Islamic religion.

The settlement was originally to be named New Dhaka, but a small number of Arab traders and clerics convinced the citizens to rename the city after its inhabitants gave them exceptionally good advice (on what is not generally remembered and the story may be apocryphal).

Garit and Hidetoro Miyagi - 1867-1902

Spoiler :

The solution came in 1867-1871, when the Meiji Restoriation took place, and a significant number of more traditional Japanese escaping from the modernization of Japan came to the beautiful and scenic Western part of the Central Province, where they found beaches resembling them of Okinawa.
The Japanese, lead by Hidetoro Miyagi, set up several beautiful traditional style tea houses, pagodas and even Buddhist and Shinto temples. Some of the Japanese also came from being sacked having built parts of the Union Pacific, concluded in 1869. These also spoke better English, and could work with the British, translating to their more traditional kinsmen. After a while, the Japanese named this settlement for "Garit", and it steadily grew to be a visibly Japanese inspired and beautiful town, a very harmonious, and for the Japanese, ethnically tolerant place. Even surviving indigenous people from the Southern island came here.

Al Hakimah and Indian Freedom - 1891-1902

Spoiler :

As the British saw that the upland from Garit had great potential for making cotton, and knowing the Japanese were excellent fabricators of fine textiles, the local British Governor in Astoria, Sir Victor Nelson, decided to bring in Indian tenant workers from Bengal, India. These were all reliable and hard-working Moslem Indians, and they were allowed to create their own community next to Garit. The Indians and Japanese cooperated surprisingly well, and the Japanese helped the Indians found "Al Hakimah", also known as "The Wise", in 1891. The Indians and the Japanese had all large families and both settlements grew fast, intermarriages between the groups also became common. The Japanese, even though they fought the Emperor, were all very nationalistic, but they were very pragmatic about being on a foreign island and making good allies, but they still felt very Japanese.