Records: Upper WestHem Kingdoms

### **The Claw-Fang Apocalypse**

The megafauna of the WestHem were incredibly dangerous. Even for the magically-enhanced military of Aquitaine, the massive size of the beasts combined with the hunting skill of apex predators meant retuning both tactics and expectations. It was miraculous that humanity had survived at all in the area after what was obviously a supernatural attempt at genocide.

Even the non-predators were unnaturally hostile towards humanity, leading to as many tragedies by hoof and horn as there had been by claw and fang.

In the turbulence of side-stepping extinction, there was an unexpected effect: the regional humans had grown closer to the non-enhanced megafauna. Together, they used the megaflora to their advantage. Where the humans survived at all, there was no shortage of food. Where there had been wide-open plains, there were now forests with trees that were a hundred feet tall, minimum.

### **The Warriors to End All Wars**

The potent military magic of Aquitaine had brought much of the regional megafauna in check. It wasn't the optimal solution, but the anti-human reactions in the truly giant sabre-toothed tigers, the house-sized mammoth (and buffalo nearly as big), seemed hard-coded in the newly super-sized creatures.

The only alternative at this point was blasting the beasts – but angry houses didn't go down easy, no matter what firewpower was brought to bear. Still, the firepower *did work* – and once they adapted to the speed and nature of the threat, *it worked extremely well*.

While the Royal Arms had already garnered the legend of the Warriors to End All Wars, their ability to not only survive in the wild but bring down marauding, murderous packs and herds only grew. In those areas, the un-enhanced fauna was able to return, though their numbers were just as depleted as humanity, either being considered food or competition for food.

### **Completion of Kaskaskia Citadel**

Six months after founding Kaskaskia, construction was essentially complete on the citadel proper, the support town and the greater town walls. While there were Europeans there, the bulk of the labor – and now the craftsmen – were regional refugees. They'd read from the *Books of Learning*, becoming instantly fluent in Latin as the neutral, universal language. They'd read from instruction manuals from ironworking to mining, the leatherwork and so on – making the critical labor infrastructure completely local.

The refugees hailed from all over the region, primarily the Illiniwek Confederation (out of the north). Beyond, though, there were Osages and Wichitas from the immediate west, the Miamis and Shawnee from the east, and Cherokee and Chickasaws from the south.

### **Six Months of Search and Rescue Operations**

The SA had led the effort of S&R, with the RANP anthropology, cartographic and biology teams in tow. The OM was always present, though minimal, as there were essentially no traces of arcane magic in the area. There was limited sign of divine (psionic) magic, and there were certainly stories of the spirits having helped humanity (or the greater spirits trying to kill them).

Six months of search and rescue, mapping and surveys, and they'd located pockets of survivors around the Great Lakes, toward the east coast, down toward the gulf, and to the west, to the rise of the Rocky Mountains. There were stories of tribes in places where only ruins and remains were found.

### **Nation-building In a Hybrid Society**

The Claw-Fang Apocalypse had taken a huge toll on WestHem humanity, though even before that, there was a war-torn mixture of cultures, both settled and nomadic. As Aquitaine had educated the refugees, facilitating communications, Kaskaskia had become the melting pot of previously warring tribes.

Times were changing, *significantly*, and that much more with WestHem natives learning both arcane and divine magic "from the east." This meant both nation-building and state-building in a very similar function as the Romans had spread the advances of their civilization. With magic, the dauntingly steep learning curve was reduced to nothing, but that same power that magic offered also tended to outshine much of the native culture.

At this point, however, it was a matter of human survival in otherwise extreme-hazard environments. Given the fractured, depleted state of regional tribes, the RANP/OM guided the process of building new polities based on surveys of the survivors during the search and rescue. Once they had demographic maps of what cultural roots there were against the points of geographic contiguity and what humanity remained, the picture started to resolve itself.

### **Rebuilding the West**

Aquitaine had its hands full to the east – but there were already signs of darker elements on the horizon. The Crown of the Commonwealth ("CrownCom") needed powerful, self-sustaining allies in WestHem, or whatever was destined to invade would have a base of operations against the rest of the world. Based on Foreign intelligence, the OM knew there were cultures in the WestHem, but hadn't expected the Claw-Fang Apocalypse.

Rebuilding the WestHem now meant taking a leadership role. The recently-formed Commonwealth of the Magna Carta was *almost* perfect for the task, but was more suited to adapting and updating established foundational civilizations. The CMC was now looking at similar issues with nomadic cultures of the central Asian steppes – and how to build them into cultures capable of withstanding a different kind of onslaight – so the WestHem challenges forced faster adaptation.

As of March, 1381, and almost overnight, the CMC formed three Imperial Federations, in a formula roughly based on an equation of geography and culture. To the east, a major swath through the middle of upper WestHem was what might've once been identified as the Plains tribes. To the south was the Eastern Woodlands – Southeast, and to the direct east and up around the Great Lakes was the Eastern Woodlands – Northeast.

The universal language was made latin, as that was a neutral tongue between the [formerly] warring tribes – and it could be taught overnight to exceptional fluency. The Imperial Federations, then, took Romanized and truncated tribal names, combined portmanteau-style into a new, reflective (but tribally neutral) regional name.

* **The Illaminis Imperial Federation.** The Great Lakes region, including the newly chartered Kingdom of Illinois, Miamis, Shawnees, Ottawas, Hurons, Massachusetts, and other regional, surviving tribes.
* **The Cherotawa Imperial Federation.** The Eastern Woodlands, Southeast, including the newly chartered Kingdom of Cherokee, Choctaw, Mobile, Creek, Yamasee, and other regional, surviving tribes.
* **The Aranosages Imperial Federation.** The Great Plains, including the newly chartered Kingdom of Wichita, Osages, Kiowas, Arapaho, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Crow, Arikaras, Mandan, and other regional, surviving tribes.

Each of the Imperial Federations was then divided into component kingdoms (as noted), with some independent principalities and duchies between them, as well as principalities and duchies for larger, semi-distinct and surviving sub-sections of kingdoms.

Territory was roughly based on the former operating territory of the tribes. The challenge for the formerly nomadic cultures was now adapting to placing foundations and taking a different type of stewardship over their territory. To their benefit, they were in the CMC at the ground level, able to benefit from the patent and licensing system both mundane and magical.

### **The Eastern Anchor of the Illaminis Federation**

While the Great Lakes were the central geographic feature of the Illaminis Imperial Federation, the eastern edge went along the Atlantic coast. It was *inevitable* that the coastal cities would soon rise to considerable power as they established trade with the EastHem, but they weren't there yet.

Save one.

Established in January, the Duchy of Beothuk was folded in to the Illaminis Federation as the far eastern anchor. Beothuk was growing quickly with an increasing European population, though leadership was technically native.

Roughly the equivalent of a 14th-century Los Alamos, most of that population was focused on large-scale secret OM magic that many guessed to be military in nature (the exact same thing that Kaskaskia was working on – with the regional stabilization as security measure for the facility).

### **The Future of Upper WestHem**

Kaskaskia functioned as Saumur did for the European coordination – though at the moment, Saumur was still the overall capital. The increasing presence of native WestHem reps in Anjou was also giving the rest of Europe an idea of how fast CMC power was spreading in the west (despite the lands being demonstrable monster stomping grounds).

In the Upper WestHem, there were still regions that had minimal contact or mapping, including the subarctic region well to the north, and everybody/anybody still alive in the Rocky Mountain area and further (towards the estimated ocean on the far side).

The WestHem word was spreading through Europe, and the Europe word was spreading through the WestHem...