Episode 4: Parallel Snark – Y1

The first report delivered to the submarine comes from Salvador, founded in one of the remotest corners of South America and rapidly becoming one of the most appropriate city names on the cylinder. Soldiers from Chile and the increasingly victorious Inca Empire stream into the city, whether to heal their wounds or just to escape from the horrors of the front or whatever vindictive commander they’re unlucky enough to serve under. The small, insignificant state of Brazil carries on with life regardless.

The Incan advances have not gone unnoticed in the north, however, and the struggling Chileans find a new friend in the benevolent Praetor of Texas, Sam Houston. Or at least, that’s the Texan story.

Neutral observers have recorded that at the time of the meeting, Houston was still getting to grips with his sudden adoption of a style of government not previously realised outside of a few hobby groups in Corpus Christi, saw that Texas and Chile had almost the same flag as each other, and decided that it would save everyone a lot of bother if the nations could agree never to fight a war between said banners.

Mao takes a break from examining the latest Chinese advances in sword technology - apparently you can just make the swords longer and they turn more effective, who knew? - to examine the latest reports from the naval blockade of Tokyo. Something strikes him as not quite right about the stories of an overwhelmingly superior navy bombarding the city for months and not being able to capture so much as a fishing boat, but he shrugs it off as an oversight by the local scribes.

Osei Tutu slowly returns to concentrating after experiencing a strange feeling, as if something important, somewhere, had happened with gods. Despite incessant questioning of his advisors, none of them could guess which god or gods any of it related to, and urged Osei to get on with the business of defending his relocated princely compound from the suddenly power-projecting Zulus. Osei is said to have experienced an involuntary bowel movement when he first realised how close the Impi were to his walls; unfortunately, it was not recorded whether or not his stool was golden.

Further north, the Timurid principality is enjoying a period of unusual peace, with war-horses frolicking around the fields and flood plains as if they were ponies. Prince Timur takes the opportunity to build a grand mosque in Samarqand, and is surprised to find that the usual anxiety when building a wonder of the world - that the plans in question were drawn up in honour of the wrong god - was completely absent this time around.

Back in Africa, Osei makes peace with the Ayyubids, perhaps agreeing that Africa as a whole needed to be defended from the forces of the Shivering Isles. Um, sorry, I mean Portugal.

Another Principality makes a diplomatic move, as Saladin, perhaps eager to see the back of his Minister for War after seeing him for the first time in months post-Ashanti war and realising how much he hated him, dispatched him to sign a research agreement with the faraway land of the Finns. Some in his court question the decision, however, as the Zulus are tantalisingly close to the full Cape-to-Cairo and might be tempted to snatch the last piece of the puzzle.

Faced with the might of the Mughal army just over the border, Anawrahta decides to try and counter Akbar’s brawn with some brains. As if by magic, one day a mysterious man shows up at the Mandalay barracks, shows his tactical acumen by destroying the entire garrison at chess, and is summoned to see the city’s chief of defence.

“So, Hannibal, if that is indeed your name. What is your plan to take on the Mughals?”

“I intend to cross the Alps with elephants!”

There was a silence.

“Elephants, we can give you elephants. But there’s one thing I don’t understand…”

“Yes?”

“What the hell is an Alp?”

Hannibal gestured outside the window, where the mighty Himalayas could be seen in the distance.

“They’re like those things…”, he started, and then looked down, embarrassed.

“...only smaller.”

Back in the sub, Smerdis receives an order to proceed to his next assignment - Lisbon. Whether this is to offer his underling’s services as an impromptu therapist, or to do the opposite and make Maria madder for extra unpredictability value, nobody knows.

Prince Malachy - yeah, I know, this cylinder has more princes than a Habsburg dad looking for land grabs - declares war on Poland (since when were they at peace anyway, murmur voices from the sub), and although the Finnish front had quietened down, the inhabitants of Krakow look on at the Irish axe troops and wonder whether they should escape. It is one thing to lead an attacking army when your swords are longer than the defenders’. Doing the same when you have no swords in the first place is another.

Nusantara is seemingly peaceful once more. The observers on the sub, breathing a little sigh of relief as they realise the cylinder isn’t quite as insane as it might be for once, swiftly move on to the next report.

A hardy band of pirates, lured by the promise of plundering ships filled to the brim with various detached bits of seal and beaver, reaches the frigid Blackfoot outpost of Ahkaiyikokakinik after weeks at sea. After realising that the people of these parts don’t actually go in for the whole overhunting malarkey in the first place, the party considers settling down, waiting for the day when someone does come along worth stealing from.

Osei Tutu awakens to a double dose of miracles. Not only have the Zulus bypassed Denkyira, thus at the very least stopping him from having to move palace yet again for a while yet, the beleaguered Ashanti empire have also been offered a declaration of friendship by the Irish. The observers smile their ethereal smiles once again, realising that Ireland’s underdog solidarity extends to worlds where there isn’t an England.

The most interesting thing about this slide might well be that all three principalities are in different eras. Tutu I can understand, but Saladin should be ashamed of himself for falling behind the Timurids of all people.

Saladin puts up the most significant resistance we’ve seen yet to the twin menaces of the Zulus and Portuguese. His forces surround Utique, and the palace attendants of Cairo start planning the grand celebration that would surely follow the city’s fall. Saladin just sits there, pondering the great mysteries of life. Why nobody sent a melee unit to Utique, what on earth a ‘printing press’ is, things like that.

Smerdis arrives in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, looking around in wonder at the palaces and mansions full of African plunder, at the same time grand and showing obvious signs of not being put together properly. Wandering the chaotic streets, he overhears a very Portuguese rumour: that Maria, irritated by the similarity between her five-crown emblem and the flag of Finland, is plotting against Lawspeaker Urho Kekkonen.

The aforementioned Lawspeaker calls off the invasion of Tampere with very mixed feelings. It was a war he could have won, but on the other hand, it was also a war that the Poles started, so all in all, he reasoned, it could have been worse. Nonetheless, although his emotionless exterior may not have shown it during the signing of 1020 AD’s Treaty of Reval, he has grown increasingly worried about Finland’s small size, especially given his nearest neighbour is a mere city-state. On the Polish side of the border, emotions are similarly mixed; there is now the Irish menace to worry about near Krakow, and Maria’s annexation of Messene may be a sign of northern expansion to come.

Prince Malachy looks out over the Irish Sea at his extensive domain. Once, his dream was simply to unify the four Irish kingdoms, Connacht, Leinster, Ulster, and Munster. That had been achieved centuries ago, and he had since expanded into the island formerly known as Britain and beyond. His business today mostly involved the new navy being built in Cork, part of the newly-christened kingdom of Hamster, and seemingly with the ability to take out nearby minor powers if the Irish Principality felt so inclined.

The sun rises over Tokyo once more, and Meiji looks out from his imperial palace over the sprawling expanse of his Eastern Capital. Two things came to his mind. Firstly, he had somehow forgotten to actually call himself Emperor, rather than simply Daimyo, this entire time. Second, a suspicious lack of the Chinese troops that had been terrorising the Kanto for so long.

There was no time to celebrate, though; word soon reached him that the hitherto isolated nation-state of Hawai’i had sided with the Chinese. During the subsequent four-hour tea ceremony, the Japanese leadership decided to fight on; if there was one thing their nation is used to, they reasoned, it’s scary things emerging from the Pacific and making a beeline for Tokyo.

Lester B. Pearson, Steward of Canada, has had enough. Enough of meeting hostile leaders; enough of diplomatic triangulation; enough of doing the right thing, even if he would never dream of not apologising after doing the wrong one. With one stroke of his quill, he kills two birds with one paperweight, handing the often-malcontent Quebec region to Henry Morgan in exchange for peace.

Only a few years after the treaties were signed, the Hawai’ians tear them up, breaking their alliance with China and signing a peace treaty with Japan. Emperor Meiji cautiously begins the slow process of rebuilding. Losing Kyoto hurt, no question. But, he reasoned, Kyoto during reconstruction would likely be a city full of temple-loving communists watching Chinese people wander around with massive bags, and thus, its citizens wouldn’t notice any change from the status quo ante.

King Crowfoot, safely separated from the Cowboy Praetor by the Sioux nation-state and their vaguely homoerotically-named capital, laughs manically as he signs the Treaty of Mdewakantonwan with the Canadians, ensuring that the centuries-old Texan war goal of Kingston would in fact be added to his empire. All Houston can do is seethe, at least for now; some in the Blackfoot kingdom worry about how undefended the city is.

Meanwhile, Montreal is reported as having taken damage from an unknown assailant. Canada? Didn’t they peace out already? War and peace declarations this round are pretty confusing, I’m gonna say.

To Moscow, they came seeking fortune… they, of course, being the Poles, battered by so many wars and yet deciding to go on the offensive. Prince Casimir is seemingly trying to make sure that his Poland is one of the fearless Winged Hussar or Pilsudski Polands rather than the ones that have a habit of getting partitioned. It seems to be paying off; Krakow on the Irish front isn’t even taking damage. Godspeed.

As the Kongo declare war on most of North Africa (best guess is that they allied the Portuguese), we get a close-up shot of the Nile. Prince Saladin is berated by an advisor for planning farms in the desert while neglecting the floodplains south of Cairo, because, as we all know, that is simply not how you Egypt. He has, however, managed to acquire his unique Mamluks, mainly known as a mid-tier Paradox tag but in this case handy when attacking cities and going through desert. Here’s hoping the Prince knows how to use them properly.

So the Mayans are now allies with Chile, which must mean something or this slide might not have been picked, and I see Mayan troops taking damage next to Bucc ones. Does that mean the Buccs are at war with Chile? This was not mentioned at the end of the last episode. Please, I need some clarity here. Maybe I should look at a Mayan astronomical chart to see if that holds any clues.

The petty ruler of Yakutia, in the far Siberian tundra, decides to change a minor detail of his foreign policy. No longer, decided Darkhan, would the Yakuts try and drum up morale amongst their troops by claiming they were at war with a faraway and probably fictional realm known as Kongo, over whether boreal forest or jungle can claim the title of ‘coolest type of terrain with trees on it’. Time instead to turn to more pressing matters, such as what to do with the increasingly scary-looking Chinese and catching up with North-East Asia’s hot new woodblock series, Pirates of the Bering Strait.

After a very, very long conflict, the Incans and Chileans make peace, and perhaps surprisingly, it’s the latter who has officially come out on top, defending La Serena and maintaining their hold on Buenos Aires. O’Higgins and his fearless people are still in this, albeit still with a lot to fear from Team Llama to the north.

The Babylonians have started to realise something about Maria the Mad after her unlikely capture of Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte from the Sri Lankans, a war they didn’t even realise was happening.

The Portuguese, so far, have taken a narrow coastal rectangle in Iberia and used it to expand not only into North Africa, but to colonies on the Guinea coast and the west coast of the Indian Subcontinent, among other places.

Maria is no longer mad, they realised.

Sphereworld Portugal was mad. Maria is learning. From a world she has no idea exists in the first place.

What have we done?

Speaking of Portugal, we now get a shot of their African holdings, along with… oh. Something’s not right here.

I can’t say the Ashanti deserved to be, as far as I am aware, the first major civ to die in CBRY. They expanded a little oddly, but didn’t make the normal mistake of not expanding enough at all. They got dogpiled by pretty much every civ around them, but lasted an impressively long time, with Prince Osei, he who became one with his realm, fighting back fiercely and reclaiming his beloved Kumasi more times than I could count. They might have lived to fight another day, even, had the Zulus not somehow managed to bypass the Kongolese and deliver the killing blow. F for the Ashanti. You shall be remembered. Here’s hoping there’s a pikeman somewhere outside this screenshot, it’s even the right era.

The Sri Lankans have reclaimed Kotte from the Portuguese, while Akbar, one of the few remaining Warlords on the map, somewhat paradoxically creates the Hofburg, a palace usually associated with complex European dynasties that are sort of the opposite of warlords. Meanwhile, there are a lot of Burmese and Portuguese ships floating around, and once again, I’m not sure who they’re taking damage from. If I was Anawrahta, I’d try and go thalassocratic; the Mughals wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.

Meiji receives a declaration of war from a faraway city-state known as the Sioux. It takes quite a while for his advisors to get through to him that this is in fact not something he should worry about responding to using the correct polite language, or indeed, with any language at all; the whole thing is a decoy, sent by the so-far-unsuccessful Chinese attack force in the hope that the Daimyo would spend all his time agonising over how to spell Sioux in katakana.

Pointy stick time, and the Cowboy Praetor is on top, followed closely by Pachacuti, and then Armenia, who we knew were powerful but haven’t seen anything of yet. Other than that, the rankings are pretty predictable, so let’s look at the titles that have just been revealed! We now have two Praetors (if that is even the plural), as Mao adopts the latest in Texan governmental innovations, and if it starves anyone in the process, ah well. Maria is a Regent, Shaka is a King, and Anawrahta is a Sangharaja, apparently a type of Theravada Buddhist theocrat.

Celebrations erupt in Warsaw and Poznan as the latest news comes back from the Soviet front: the Polish army is now in range of Moscow having dispatched most of its defenders. Casimir is even branded the Conqueror, the people, in their jubilation, seemingly having forgotten that that’s supposed to come after taking the city.

Malachy’s princely court begins to express concern about how much their liege has been sleeping recently. The Irish navy is still fearsome, but the Finnish and Polish have both been building their navies up faster as of late, and at the very least, there should really be an attack on Iceland or Norway going on now - ironically enough, perhaps. There also seems to have been a peace treaty signed with the Poles, perhaps via sleeptalking.

“We the People of the United State, in Order to form a more perfect Texas, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United State of Texas…”

In other news, Meiji has started to expand again, although if he’s still at war with the Chinese, going for a one-tile island does not seem like a wise decision.

Warlord Akbar decides to declare war on the Portuguese, as after all, it is in his job description and he wouldn’t want to disappoint whatever eldritch Emperor gave him the title. Unfortunately, never having been south of Gaur, nobody has told him that the blue bit on maps between his empire and Vila Nova de Gaia is, in fact, not a stretch of oddly coloured fields.

The Babylonians wonder why Malachy hasn’t learnt from his distant relative in the New World. Bernardo O’Higgins has made the move he needs to make in order to stay relevant, and ordered his armies to Delete Brazil, first marching on Salvador and assuring that both candidates for ‘most inappropriately named cities of the Renaissance’ (the other being La Serena) come under his control. Here’s hoping the Incas don’t get too angry. Those crossbows look scary.

Maria, mid-sigh of relief after being updated on the Mughal situation, receives a second declaration of war, and this one is a lot scarier. The Zulus seem to be trying to mimic the sprawling, steampunk Zulu empire from 80 Days, attacking the European interlopers and standing a good chance of capturing Kumasi. On the other hand, the Portuguese may be about to trade it for the western half of the Ayyubid empire. This has ‘logistics challenge’ written all over it for both sides.

The sub is kind enough to reward us with a shot of the Zulu core, including the (presumably briefly) newly Portuguese city of Nodwengy. Unlike some other empires, the Zulus don’t yet have crossbows, but on the other hand, they have plenty of Impi and Shaka can seemingly be assured that he has a solid-looking conga in the Congo heading up towards Mampong.

The Maori remind us what their nation is like by building the Torre del Oro. Like Sphereworld’s Aotearoa, the Maori appear to have settled in to the role of ‘nation on the edge of the map where nothing bad ever seems to happen’.

Hawai’i has reestablished its alliance with China and is back to attacking Japan. So far, Japan - even Nagoya, which should be an easy target for Praetor Mao - has escaped any sort of damage, as it seems like Mao knows about as much about melee units as he did about how agriculture works. The only anti-Japanese melee unit anywhere close to Tokyo is a Hawai’ian carrack, implying that Tokyo could theoretically become a Hawai’ian colony in an odd sort of Pacific island unity empire.

The two Irish lads have again taken rather different paths. As O’Higgins celebrates the fall of Salvador and the establishment of what could be an important salient in any Inca wars, Malachy… allies a nation-state on the wrong side of Europe. Obviously. I can only assume there’s some sort of logic that makes it the progressive thing to do, judging by the sidebar.

The Zulus have paused their northward push to do what Shaka calls securing their supply line and what the rest of the world calls annexing Kongo for the hell of it. The Portuguese have taken Utique and stand a good chance of advancing to Ejura, but that Zulu army isn’t gonna defeat itself...

At roughly the same time as the advent of the Australian outback as the centre of the cylinder’s art world, the Poles have edged closer to taking Moscow, and with only one front to deal with, stand a decent chance of being able to swarm further into Soviet territory. Kekkonen, too, has a significant and high-tech army, although he seems irritatingly reluctant to use it on either the Norwegians or the odd Timurid exclave on the White Sea. Maybe he appreciates fellow exclave merchants and prefers to leave them be. Fair enough, I suppose.

The inhabitants of Sydney listen in fear as the unmistakable sounds of the haka edge ever closer, shortly followed by the sound of galleons firing their cannons, the smoke creating its own long white clouds in the cannonballs’ wake. Ever since their ancestors first set food on the Unexplored Land of the South, they had lived in fear of this day, and here it was: the natives getting even. The Kimberley, too, look on in interest through the eye-holes of their spooky masks.

Shaka smiles as he hears of the fall of Kavanga and the almost-certainty that M’banza-Kongo will be next. The Babylonians, too, watch on with great interest; at this point, it does not look like there are many timelines that could still be realised, in which the Zulu advance is halted.

The submarine looks on with ever greater concern as Maria keeps aping the parallel-universe Portuguese, this time getting into conflicts with Japan, presumably over how many guns and bibles the former can sell to the latter; one can only presume that they started out trying to get Japan to relent via curtailing the tempura trade, but Japan, already used to random bouts of rationing whenever Chinese ships get close, just shrugged. Shikata ga nai, one supposes.

Te Rauparaha channels the spirit of a rather different and rather more cylindrical parallel dimension, using the latest in novel fire-stick technology to charge into Sydney and secure the portion of Australia surrounding it. Melbourne will surely follow, and Brisbane is looking like easy pickings for Jandamarra if he is so inclined. Soon, all that will be left of the Australian nation-state will be a collection of stubbornly earth-bound garbage patches.

The democratically elected Captain Morgan steers his flagship into Montreal, looking on approvingly at the city showing no obvious signs of war damage, the half-built courthouse on the seafront, and the large fishing fleet built to tap the Grand Banks. The former Canadian city had been firmly secured by the Buccaneers, and Toronto was looking more tempting by the day.

Another new democracy, Texas, having decided that this Ancient Roman malarkey wasn’t all it was cracked up to be after everyone else leapt on the bandwagon, launches a fleet of their infamous Light Grey Ships westwards. The last time the observers saw anything of the Texan navy, it was fairly small, but anything might tip the balance in war-weary Japan.

The Zulus summarily dispatch the only notable obstacle standing between them and total domination of Africa. Granted, their outpost of Ejura has been taken by the Portuguese, but once the former Kongo lands become fully integrated, their supply chains will be much sturdier. Right, guys? Right?

The one bit of Maria’s empire without a Sphereworld counterpart is facing some rather half-hearted attacks from a resurgent Sri Lankan nation-state, perhaps as a way to sort of coax Maria into doing what she seems to think of as the ‘right’ thing for whatever reason. The Sri Lankans, for their part, aren’t doing this as revenge for Kotte. They’re doing it because Vila Nova de Gaia would be a perfectly good southern Indian Subcontinent-style extra-long place name were it not for the pesky spaces in between the words, and seeing it like this was just that frustrating.

Says it all, really. Loving the Maori redemption arc.

Red Square’s redness is the only thing that hasn’t changed in Moscow. Granted, the variety of red has changed; from the communist type of red to the type that comes with the cobbles being stained with blood, to the later post-clean-up celebration of conquest, complete with red-and-black Polish banners everywhere one looked. The Poles, despite losing an early war, are living up to their prince’s Conqueror moniker at long last, streaming into the remainder of the USSR while constructing new fortress towns in the western Baltic and fully recovering around Krakow. The Finns are still at least respectable, but are looking more and more eclipsed as time goes on.

Ah. Forgot that medieval ships couldn’t cross oceans. I believe this means that Texan prospects in Japan entirely depend on whether they can get open borders with the Chinese (quite likely) and whether Houston can successfully manoeuvre a full-sized navy through a one-tile strip of coast along the Kodiak peninsula (perhaps less likely, cf. Kingston). Samurai or cowboys? It’s been asked many times before, but not often in the context of both being on boats.

Good news for Maria: she has a new, hefty nation-state ally to deal with all her many enemies! Bad news: it’s Indonesia and they aren’t anywhere near any of them, with the exception of Sri Lanka, who aren’t doing much anyway. Wouldn’t Ethiopia have been a better pick? Maria is back to her old inscrutable self.

Henry Morgan is tantalisingly close to taking Nassau yet again. The Incan navy is stronger than the last time the Caribbean was at war, but it’s still very clear who’s on top, especially as this map doesn’t have a Panama Canal. Meanwhile, Te Rauparaha is the latest convert to Roman LARPing in a world without any Romans in the first place. Specifically, he’s a populist Praetor. Somebody tell him that Aotearoa doesn’t need a big wall, seeing as it already has a rather nice moat.

Mao builds the Globe Theatre. I wonder if he’ll allow it to stage plays other than those written by his wife.

Last proper slide of this part, and ooooh, the aforementioned populist Praetor has snatched Brisbane out from under Jandamarra’s scarily-masked nose. Hard to say whether he minds or not, as we don’t know whether that Kimberley army was knocking on Brisbane’s door since before the Maori takeover or after. Te Rauparaha, for his part, shows the world what an absolute chad he is by reminding everyone that conquering Australia took up a small enough amount of his time for him to keep patronising the finer things in life, building a palace facing the channel between the North and South Islands. In other news, the Portuguese Empire (ooh) has started to fall back against the might of the Zulus.

We start with demographics. Although Armenia had the overall lead here last episode, Praetor Mao has taken over with three categories, including, ironically, crop yield. The Incans and Portuguese also make strong showings, while the Armenians, although holding on to their pointy-stick crown, have happiness issues despite not having expanded at all this episode.

Te Rauparaha - who else? - has reached the Enlightenment, but also has a complete lack of friends. He’s the Henry Cavendish of CBRY.

Pachacuti, while technologically respectable, has apparently failed to focus on anything else other than military, with zero friends and zero wonders. Meanwhile, Mao is also in the Enlightenment club.

Religion-wise, the Christians seem to be doing better than the rest, with the exception of the behemoth Wakan Tanka. Don’t mess with the bison.

No kidding.

I mean it. Don’t buffalo the buffalo.

Ah, so that’s why Maria is being Maria, she’s under the control of the bourgeoisie.

Similarly, Meiji is confused because he’s trying to figure out how a sedentary nomadic horde works.

Mao leads a republic with populists in charge. In other words, a people’s republic of China. Nice one.

And that’s the end of the episode! I hope for your sake the next narrator is less tardy than I was, thanks as ever for keeping up with this rather intriguing Royale, and see you around, I suppose. Ja mata!