Okay everybody! Voting time is now! Vote for my project with a Tweet so we have a shot at winning!
Help my team out! Vote #cosmosium for @spaceapps People's Choice. http://t.co/b9ZeKBtwvE Deadline 5 May @spaceappsvirtual #spaceapps
— iontom (@TomRiecken) April 29, 2014
A week ago, on Thursday April 10th, I was digging through the internet looking for material for a lengthy blog post about creating distributed grid simulations with a hierarchical federated architecture. (Still working on it, the concepts aren’t all super new, but the combination of several different concept might be a powerful method.)
During this search, I came across a world-spanning competition called the NASA Space Apps Challenge. After reading a few of the mission goals, I knew then and there that this could be the time to shine. There were two primary challenges for which I thought would be worth applying to, both within the #asteroid category.
The title of our project was Cosmosium, inherited from a label I a mockup last summer. However, I later noticed that there already exists a French organization of the same name. It might be more fitting then to change the final m to an s, and to call the git page “Cosmosius.” This remains TBD. Later on however, I checked availability on the new gTLD, “Asteroid.Ventures,” and bought it immediately. It’s the perfect name for our little experiment!
Now before you read any further, go check out our WIP demo, Asteroid.Ventures or go straight to the github page and clone a copy. Give the demo time to load, the WebGL can be taxing. Eventually we will curb load time on the non-game pages by making a simpler scene and modularizing the JS libraries.
Now, here’s the story about how we came to create our work of art!
It had only been one week since I had revisited the concept of building an asteroid mining game in WebGL, as I discussed in this previous blog article. Already, my mind had been whirling on what a game like this should look like. It could function as sort of a meta-game, or empire builder, but focused on speculative science and hard science-fiction.
I also had been working with Magnetar Games on the start to a massive HLA compliant virtual world platform, also based in WebGL. However, progress on the Magnetar technology platform wasn’t yet sufficient to publish any result in the short time frame. So instead I had to go solo. I decided to trust in the power of Reddit and recruit an open source team to rise to the occasion.
Crowd-power worked! I found a group of talented and willing compatriots to help set about creating a web application out of nothing. All it took was a post on /r/Simulate and /r/Futurology to raise a few heads. I am deeply grateful to the volunteers who helped shape and lead this project with me. Foremost, I want to thank Tylar Murray for his work in getting the web framework operational, and Daniel Andersen for building such a beautiful WebGL render!
We started with a discussion thread but quickly moved to live chat. It was paramount to start the discussion early enough to have a technology strategy.
Our initial plan was to take bits and pieces from several existing libraries in hopes of finding compatible layers for our application. Like most other teams competing, we were all enamored with the Asterank API, but soon found direct query access to JPL Small-Body Database. For the web platform, we had initially been considering using the MetaSim Component libraries found in WebHexPlanet.
The ideas was that we could use the SailsJS MVC to build up templates and host on a NodeJS server, then concurrently we would run a Python based server which had the barebones of Asterank running, but using Bottle.py to write a mirrored MetaSim API to pass asteroid data to the NodeJS server. The architecture in question would function as:
MPC_Data =API=> Asterank_Cloned_Server(No graphics) <=MetaSim_API=> WebsiteMVC <=RESTful_Client=>Your computer
Then we unfortunately lost our dedicated SailsJS architect, but between our group, we had enough modular web experience to take an alternative strategy with Python as a webserver. We stuck with Bottle.py instead of Flask or Djiango since we already work started with Bottle and the routing capabilities seemed nearly the same in terms of capability. There are a ton of Python frameworks to choose from!
Before we had even decided on our final stack or library choices, we needed to determine what the overall scope of the product would be. We were still undecided as to whether we would strictly build a game, or if we would instead try to create an HLA compliant simulation. What it boiled down to however, was whether or not our PhD student team member could get university level access, and if we would even have time to incorporate those IEEE standards into the project. We decided to leave it as a secondary concern which proved wise.
Then at 4 PM EDT / 1 PM PDT, there was a Q&A session with the Expert Panel on the Asteroid Challenges for the SpaceApps system. I got on early, and made sure to ask a deciding question to determine the scope of the project. At around 27:00 minutes, Daniel O’Neil and Phil Metzger were able to answer some of the questions we had.
On Friday night, the eve of battle, we held a Google+ Hangout to try and decide the best approach for crafting this dream-game of ours. We started discussing who knew how to do what, and envisioned what the final scope would be. We determined that we wanted to stick to the game concept and use WebGL for visualization with a Bootstrap admin theme for the front end.
Things got a little animated for a bit though when Collin of the StableOrbit library put on a full body Viking costume and challenged he would be parting ways, that he would “meet us on the field of battle!” Alright, we liked the guy and his amazing n-body work, but we had already spent time planning a WebGL deliverable based on Keplerian data with real world orbital elements. I would love one day though to use his work to model procedural solar systems! It would be an amazing component library for the MetaSim Framework!
Saturday morning finally rolled around. To culminate the fruits of our discussions, we created a Google Docs folder and drafted a Project Roadmap. I drafted some initial mockups while Daniel got the webGL scene initialized. Before we started laying the framework for the technology, we would need to determine the function and gameplay elements of the overall product. Here’s some of the initial designs we had to work from.
Without our web expert handy, Tylar and I took to getting an instance of the server up and running. Our first line of decision making was to determine the best development environment possible. Would it be better to do live edits together with a service like Cloud9, or should everyone make independent commits on local copies, then pushing to the repository?
We toyed with Cloud9, but ultimately had little use for it. It was much faster to throw a backbone routing example up for “app.py” and then start adding new segments to the production as needed. We stayed in constant contact on Google chat, to make sure no redundant work was undertaken.
We had by this point settled on Bottle.py for the reasons mentioned above. It might not have been the smartest decision, but for first time Py-web work, it would get the job done. (I had used Bottle once before, but only for static routing on a basic SPA.) So as our work flow progressed, I worked on getting setup on AWS-EC2 while Tylar put together some design specs on the build we would create. Here’s his rough model of how the asteroid server was planned:
Daniel jumped quickly into the process of creating the webGL scene in ThreeJS, our favorite library on r/Simulate! We took most of the orbital element mechanics from Asterank, but added a ton of new visual components. What we found to be rather tricky at first was the math involved in calculating the orbits. Of course, we all had some experience in astronomy, I myself had been digging up old textbooks the night before. What was tricky was getting the conventions and variable names right between the various data sources and the physical equations. The hardest parts to tell apart between sources and the Asterank model was the differences between Mean Anomaly, Mean Longitude, longitude of periapsis, and argument of periapsis.
Fairly quickly however, we were able to model the Keplerian orbits with the same functions used in Asterank scene, but reworked a bit to handle data in the way we wanted it to. Also, we had expanded on the display by adding spherical models for asteroids, planets, and later for large moons. Initially the asteroids were all spherical, but then Daniel created ellipsoids with 3-axis values and added size and brightness constraints based on diameter and albedo data provided from the MPC. Then he threw in a GLSL shader that sat on top of the JavaScript which added Gaussian noise to the vertices of the asteroid spheres. This is what gave the asteroids their “popcorn” style appearance, albeit at the cartoon style scale we were aiming for initially.
(Here’s a picture of the asteroids before given the noise shader.)
It was about this time I realized that the site pages themselves would need to have page templating added in order to be resuable. I had a theme picked out prior to everything, but realized on the day of production that we couldn’t use any of the themes I’d paid for because we needed to develop a project under open license in order to compete. So after considerable digging I found one under MIT license called AdminLTE by Almsaeedstudio.com. Go check out his stuff, I love his work! He even had the fake user as “Johannes Kepler!” Coincidence?
In any case, it was best that we found a theme which didn’t have templating. Most templating takes place in PHP, something that neither myself or Tylar felt up for learning on such a short basis. Not that I have anything against PHP, version 5 has really added quite a lot of features. My blog runs on it, I just find it a tough language to immediate jump into and pickup what’s going on. I think it’s mainly due to how functions are scoped, and just a lot of static syntax I don’t quite get.
After some time, Tylar figured out how to get the templating working such that the navigation menu could be reusable and have variable data inside. There’s still a ton of non-routing restful work that needs to be done to imitate anything approximate to an MVC… But hey, our project needs so much custom work to integrate with the WebGL scene that it’s probably best to start with something clean and easy to understand with a simple framework like bottle.
Early Quick mockup of what the site UI could look like based on an older template.
I almost feel like I will need to create a separate post at a later time to describe all the intimate design mechanics we’d like to throw in to the game. However, I’ll give a quick synopsis. Firstly, the player would be acting as the leadership team of either a single division within NASA, FKA (Russia), or ESA, or as a private space company trying to establish an asteroid mining presence and to build space infrastructure. The WebGL scene would depict missions and zones of control based on a user assigned color.
If it were entirely possible, we would have the game split up into several different phases:
1. The NEO capture phase: where players invest in detection equipment to find NEO’s, then develop rendezvous+capture technology to retrieve the asteroid either robotically or with a manned mission. Rare metals are transported back to earth, but the remainder is kept in space, and the player will then get to create infrastructure in LEO, lunar orbit, or on the lunar surface.
2. Expansion into the Main Belt (and past it): After building up surplus of material and infrastructure in the Earth-Moon system, the player can then launch missions to either retrieve material or establish bases in the main belt or Mars. The goal here is to have enough manufacturing presence in the Earth system to be able to send manufacturing to the Main Belt, Mars, and the Jovian Moons.
3. Seeking Victory: After establishing robotic colonies across the solar system, players could then invest in building human habitation. Or they could focus on science missions to search for new discoveries or to setup shop in the outer solar system. (Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, TNO’s and Kuiper Belt). Or they could focus completely on gathering enough anti-matter to power a trip to another star system.
The players would be able to push through these phases using the command interface available to them. It would be similar to the text based space empire games from 10 years ago, where a player would make decisions in the pages available, but now they’d be able to see their strategy unfolding in real time WebGL. Each of the pages could have it’s own set of responsive elements and crafty JavaScript interactive components. Here are the menu elements we had currently brainstormed:
My collaborator Tylar put’s it best: “Don’t underestimate the power of Galton’s Ox!” That is to say, don’t underestimate how much amazing work can be accomplished by a few driven people in a short amount of time, even if a few set of skills needs to be learned on the fly. Amazing things can happen!
Our project in it’s current state can of course be seen on asteroid.ventures, but of course if you’re reading this months from now, hopefully things are improved a bit from when I wrote it. Currently we have page templating and a really good WebGL start. We have data handling but not much yet in terms of storage. We are working towards having integrated DOM controls for triggering events within WebGL, but first need to restructure the scene into component modules in order to have different pieces get dynamically called.
It might also be awesome to incorporate Cosmosium with the MetaSim API. Aaron Santos’ work on the RESTful client between simulation components would be amazing to add if we had the time. The downside on this is that all of the work and the entire WebGL scene created for WebHexPlanet was crafted for a NodeJS project. Which means either we would need to rebuild sections of the API to work in Python, or else migrate all of the templating work we’ve done into the existing Node Project and forsake Python.
Now it’s tough to tell where the application will move from here. That depends on the resources which are opened up to us and the amount of time Tylar, Daniel and myself will be able to commit. If we can get other Python, Javascript, HTML5+CSS devs interested in shaping our repository, things will move more quickly. If we are able to find a grant to expand this project, it will be easier to commit to full time, and we can hire an awesome artist to help with fleshing out the technology tree or any 3D modeling of spacecraft/stations.
Irregardless, it’s been a fun run! Look forward to seeing some more posts on this soon, from me and from Daniel on rSimulate.com or on Asteroid.Ventures directly. Lastly, I leave you with the 30-second video of our project which I had to throw together in 2 hours on Sunday the 13th. Enjoy and happy hunting! Don’t forget to share and retweet this blog to help the project!
Picking up from Part I, I’m writing exposition surrounding the events of my final epic Civ 4 campaign. After this, I have to reformat my old computer, and might never get to play the game again. Moreover, Civ5 has become vastly more popular, it’s more fun to play, even if the world building aspects are less significant. Also, Paradox titles vastly eclipse Civ4 in terms of believability. So here goes, one last time for old times sake.
The early years of the Ainu culture in Nara began as simply as it had started, this period of initial growth and development of self sufficiency is known as the Yayoi period. They started as a group of self-sufficient fishing clans and a became a new class of logger-men, forest hunters, and tribal warriors. The prime timber of the Naran peninsula offered an abundant stock of hardwoods for constructing an ever larger boating fleet. Moreover, it would allow f or the construction of deadly siege weapons and sturdy stock for blunt clubs and axes. The discovery of obsidian deposits to the north brought in a greater generosity of available weapon types.
Perhaps the most notable of these early Ainu weapons was the use of the Mezzachoda, a club like mace, with grooved insets of obsidian laced into the frame of the central shaft. This weapon proved quite effective at hacking through the hatched wicker armor which was common in that early era. While little is known about the battle strategies employed by these weapons’ wielders, one certainty is the terror of anyone facing down a raid by a group of bearded Yayoi war chiefs.
At first, generations of hunters and tribe leaders, used these advances in weapon technologies to either hunt the abundant game of northern Akita, or else to engage in tribe to tribe combat. These anarchistic times with warring between tribes, only lasted for a brief time. For as the inland advances of the Yayoi warriors pushed northward, the fishermen of the Mediterasian seas became avid traders. The nearest and greatest trading port was that of Rome.
The Romans had ownership of many great terraces of grapes for crafting wine. Their shores were filled with salt and marble, which allowed for the construction of marvelous buildings and well preserved fish. What the Romans had, the Ainu coveted. The Ainu had ample land for cultivation, abundance of the forest and the sea. However, once the tastes of Rome had reached Naran elite and nearby tribal chieftains, plans arose to take these lands to be their own.
At first, the Yayoi chiefs spent generations pirating the coastal waters between the two cities, and occasional expeditions to the second Roman harbor of Antium. However, after some time, an infuriated Rome demanded that Nara reign in on its delinquent tribal raiders. During this period, leadership in the Ainu culture had begun to centralize in Nara. A line of tribal leaders became to be seen as more of de facto rulers. This early form of state had a line of matriarchal rules, starting with the Empress Gemmei.
What had originated as a trade dispute between the Ainu and the Romans, quickly escalated into a full blown military conflict. Gemmei had her troops rallied behind the leadership of “General” Kusama. Before the declaration of war, there had been no true leadership roles or solid structure within the Ainu army. The formalization of war as a political mechanization changed the way the society would operate for the next several millenia.
Kusama rallied his forces into action, quickly training the men to keep rank while engaging in hand to hand combat. He also oversaw the production process for crafting the units of siege. The log-rams would bring their battering logs across the sea, and once embarked onto the peninsula, would work to quickly craft a protective shell. In such a way, the siege could go with units protected from arrow-fire.
During this early period, the army of Nara was larger than the boating fleet could handle. The only way to cross onto the narrow Roman peninsula was to invade in waves, ferrying more men across. Before any attempt could be made at capturing Rome, the Ainu had to encamp upon the northeaster shores and fortify their position.
After the bulk of the Ainu force had made landfall, the march towards Rome took place. In their wait, the Romans had hastily erected wooden palisade walls, and a stone gate. Their single biggest defense was their tower archers. The only foot soldiers they had at this time were the lightly armored hoplites. Since the process of armor production required more ore than the Romans had access to, their main protection came in the form of shields with spears. This did not last long against the Ainu Mezzachoda swords.
The fall of Rome was estimated to occur around 7300 BC. The streets were filled with Ainu Mezzachoda Men, and the cultural exploits which followed would be exquisite. With trade flowing between Nara and Rome, facilitated by a common leader and single military, the Ainu finally had something resembling a state.
The reaches of the Naran peninsula offered excesses of land which needed to be consolidated quickly into the fold of the freshly forged Ainu state. With inter-city trade at an all time high, settlements in nearby lands wanted to have a stronger network with the political power growing in Nara and Rome. From Nara, several expeditions were sent out to formalize communities among the fishing villages along the coasts and the inland hills.
With a surplus of soldiers returning from the siege of Rome, and immigration pressure from the strange Celtic peoples of the north, a permanent standing army was established to forge forward a strong Ainu Empire. The line of Gemmei game to an end. An influx of bureaucrats from the recent roman conquest lead to a new lineage of mixed Ainu-Roman royalty. Ogawa Augustus Sabuki was the first non-Naran ruler to take the seat of the empire. The Roman tradition of patriarchy had at managed to take root in Ainu society. There would be female rulers again in time, but the normalcy became a male dominated line of emporers, and the eventual creation of a male dominated senate.
Ogawa Augustus Sabuki posing for his annual hunt into the north.
The seat of Sabuki pushed for an aggressive expansion policy of the greater Naran peninsula, and for active raids against any Celtic settlers who ventured further east than Bibracte. The seizure of Gergovia along the north Mediterasian coast was the first of many forays of war against the Celtic expanse. However, it is not the military actions alone which determined the size and shape of the Classical Ainu Empire, there was also the founding of many new villages and towns.
First was Biratori along the southern tip along the Roman Gulf. Then, between two rivers on the north of the gulf, an early Celtic province was raised, and the Emporor himself founded Monbetsu in honor of his son of the same name. Monbetsu then continued his father’s policies, founding Hamamasu in the interior, and sending his navy to create a proper fishing port just south of Gergovia, near the Danish Kattegat Bay. This was the city of Ishikari.
In addition to settling, the Augustus emperors built infrastructure in the form of a roads system, and encouraged farms and trade villages to take root between the larger settlements. Proceeding these roads came also the tradition of the savior and the cross. The Christian traditions of the Romans had expanded not only across the Ainu Empire, but also to Denmark, Hispania, even the distant Byzantium. The power and wealth of the church would bring a long lasting prosperity to the Classical Empire. It would also bring tension with the Pagan Celts.
The Celtic settlements to the north and west of the Ainu, were firm believers in the Druidic traditions of great Gaia and the nature spirit. The gods of the forest guided their hunts, looked after their crop. Whereas some of the Ainu may have incorporated such beliefs into their world, the difference was excuse enough to make a quick political play against the Celts. The recent settlement of Atsuta, just south of Bibracte, angered the lord Brennus of Celtia. The invaders wouldn’t stop with land enough though, they converted any of the remaining locals to join the side of their monotheistic god.
First was the fall of Bibracte, scholars do not know the exact date of this forfeiture, but the city went down with little fight. By the time the Ainu marched into the central square of town, there was virtually no army to resist the occupation. Vienne was more prepared, as evidence of the struggle could still be found among the ruins. With this, the Celts were forced both westward and southward. The division made it all the easier for the fourth wave of expansion, the western advance.
Annexorably, the small satelite settlements of Tolosa, Camuledunum, and Durotorrotorum, all fell to the hands of the imperial Ainu. The last of this expansion occured in the reign of the Emperor Shakushain III. It was this great expansion that defined the Ainu as a distinct culture of the north, and it is to the lineage of Shakushain to which the nation owed its greater destiny.
The restless Ainu had taken enough Celtic land to satiate their needs, and to protect against the sizable empires of the west. Armenia, Israel, Assyria, and mother Japan, all represented a potential future threat. As did the eastern powers on the continent of Eros. The Danes seemed to have cities and expanse to rival the Ainu, but merely a small seperation of earth and sea stood between these two colossal powers. Eventually, the Ainu would have to look for conquest in Armenia, to avoid having a dangerous superpower on their doorstep. For now though, the Armenians remained a loose collective of city states, and did not pose any massive threat.
What should be remembered most during the Shibuchari period (4300 – 3700 BC) is the great expanding of the Ainu culture and arts. A great Asiatic Temple was constructed in Rome, along side the pillars of the church. The mystic traditions of the Celtic Druids lead to the institution of the Oracle to take place in Gergovia, offering God’s advice to travellers of all sorts. In the Imperial Capital itself, a great deluge of free thought took place. The Church repealed some of its dogmatic treatises, and allowed for the open investigation of nature. This lead to a flourishing environment where Archimede’s could build a workshop dedicated to the arcane arts and new forms of metallurgy. This greatly expanded on the design of seige weapons and new materials were invented to fortify the walls of the Ainuian cities.
The military command in Vienne even came up with a cypher system, the Cyrus Cylinder, for encrypted communication between outposts. Years later, the Hanging gardens were also built in Vienne. Rome started a new tradition of bull riding, which prompted the popularity of cattle ranching up and down the fields of the empire, spreading as far as the plains of Tolosa. Explorers of all sorts visited the Northern Ocean, and mapped out the extent of the Akita continent. These travels even lead to contact with the distant nation of Australia.
The culture of the Ainu really took shape. A blend of Japanese ancestry, Roman aesthetics, and Celtic traditions, was taking firm root at the seat of the empire. As a crossroad of internal culture, this lead to the creation of a great wall system, a method to ensure the hoards of the west could not enter into Ainu lands without repercussions in supply management. Inside it’s safe borders, great coliseums, breweries, and myriad entertainment sprung into existence. The delights of empire kept the people happy and allowed for a steady strengthening of defenses, to prepare the Ainu for all of the challenges ahead.
I haven’t posted any real game posts in some time. However, I’ve had a Caveman2Cosmos game of Civ4 going on casually for the last few months. It actually started to become a real work of world building. Since it’s a long process, I’ll break it into several posts. It’ll be in character mostly, except for a few humorous bits.
For those unfamiliar with Caveman2Cosmos (C2C), it’s an epic mastery of modliness, produced by a content creator known only as “strategyonly.” The roots of this mod however, extend far deeper into the fabric of the Civ4 community. It builds upon a decade of development of various components which have been slowly improved, hybridized, and aggregated into this single experience. The primary components of the mod come from the aggregation work done by Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn, which itself is a “Mod-Mod,” or a continuing evolution of gameplay.
Mods within Mods!
The golden era of Civ4 modding took place around 2007-2009, after the release of the “Beyond the Sword” expansion back. The main developer behind the Rise of Mankind A New Dawn was the legendary “Afforress,” building on RoM “vanilla” made by Zappara. Some claim that his RoM 2.71 was the most well balanced version of the expansive mod. What Civ4 offered in terms of mod-ability with their Python SDK, is miles beyond what Civ 5 mods are capable of. Civ5 mods are almost exclusively content additions or game-balance tweaks.
Civ4 Mods could completely alter the engine in fundamental ways, and modders would QA bundled layers of compatible pieces. The result was a completely new experience, like getting access to a totally brand new game!
What Civ4 offered was a platform for a multitude of free game experiences. The replay-ability and epic sandbox nature is only rivaled by builder games like Minecraft or Kerbal Space Program. Of course, the combat system of Civ5 might have completely eclipses the death-stacks of Civ4, but the mod experience is nowhere near as close. Civ5 mod pieces being modular is great for controlling content, but terrible for cross-compatibility. Civ4 RoM, and by extension, C2C, are not only game mods, they are works of art. Carefully tended by a watchful team of builders, the balance, reliability and experience of Civ4 mods are very difficult to find anywhere new. Plus, with the rise of the DLC model, the power of mods to tweak the engine itself is virtually absent.
So, before Civ4 fades deeper into the annals of gaming history, I’ll give it one last go in the name of fun! I also haven’t transcribed a game into story before, although I’ve had many adventures with this game in years past. The After Action Report (AAR) format, seems to be a more passive way of storytelling than the video based let’s play, but it’s as good a place as any to get started. By the way, sorry for the low-res screen shots. Running this on a really terrible old monitor. You know, for tradition!
The early years of Japanese culture are lost to the sands of time. The Japanese Paleolithic period began at around 50,000 BC and lasted until approximately 14,000 BC. This period saw the migrations of settlers on the western portion of Honshu towards the lush fishing grounds of the eastern Kansai, and towards the Kanto peninsula on the northeastern stretch of the island. The largest settlements in Kansai would eventually come to be known as the city of Osaka, and Kansai would host Tokyo. The Kyoto culture of the west would routinely establish trade influence on their eastern descendants, forming what would eventually become the basis of empire. For now, this loose collective of semi-nomadic settlements would remain merely a cultural identity. Distinct language between these groups did not yet exist, but common similarities between speech patterns would later shape the Japanese language.
The island culture during these early years was focused on the production of sustainable food sources and a better form of tool making. Hunting tribes roamed the continents between the eastern and western settlements, searching for easy game and trying to protect more threatening wildlife away from their agricultural brethren. Some choice encounters even involved interaction with wandering Neanderthal families. While interbreeding circumstances are not understood, there is some speculation that these hominids would be held captive and made to perform simple labor. Genetic markers have recently revealed that geographically, neanderthal genes originated from the western Kyoto region. In fact, it is estimated that in the early period, most other spare game was traded with the settled tribes of the west.
Also, during the beginning of the Jomon period, early explorers took to the water in search of better fishing grounds. Their explorations took them north, through the tropics and into colder climates, ripe with cod and herring. At first, no significant settlement occured. The distances were extraordinarily far, and any fishermen which traveled that far, seldom brought families to raise new land. Moreover, these fishermen were accustomed to building with the tropical hardwoods of Honshu, and could not work easily with the birch and pine of the greater north.
Following the exploration and extensive hunting of Honshu, the Japanese fishing fleets pushed towards the northeastern shallow seas, what we know today as the Mediterasian. This body of water very delicately splits two massive continents. To the west sits Aikita, to the east is Eruda. As the fishing fleets explored every more north, they encountered a variety of cultures and civilizations. First, they met scouts and other fishing fleets, but soon they had sailed past the humble villages of Rome and Constantinople.
From the bounty of their exploits, some of these fishing fleets came upon coastal treasures. In a select few beaches, these fishing fleets found small tribes of natives who were willing to accept the fishermen as residents in these new lands. The intrepid explorers made quick to partition their fleet and allow some members to form permanent settlements along the shores of the Mediterasian. The first settlement was declared Kagoshima, on the Minoan half of the Roman peninsula, but in close proximity to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Years later, a second settlement is founded to the shores just north of Rome.
The second settlement, Nara, was much richer in abundant forests for shipbuilding, and prairies for eventual farming. It’s extrusion into the sea sat just north of Rome itself, which was at this time becoming a jewel of the Mediterasian. The people in its streets spoke of a savior, returned from death. The ancestor worship traditionally practiced by the Japanese settlers, blended harmoniously with the ethos of the Romans. Soon the Narans came to covet the freedom of the lifestyle of the Romans, and felt less connected to the world their forefathers had left behind on the island of Honshu. Soon the trade with their fatherland came to a standstill, Nara would govern itself and establish itself as the primary reckoning force of the Mediterasian. Nara wanted what Rome had, they would need to model the beginnings of their culture and their state after the strange men of olives and wine.
Meanwhile, the men of Honshu begin to connect their settlements, and agriculture is starting to become a practiced tradition. Soon paths and roads will connect the island east to west. Trade is picking up, neanderthals are permanently integrated into the human species, and a small ancestor memorial, Tara Hill, is built. The beliefs of the Japanese are coming to be known as Shinto, while the Narans to the north start to identify as Christians. After some time passes, the restless Narans finally decide to cut ties entirely and form a new culture. These fishing men of the north have different habits of culture entirely. Whereas facial hair is no longer kept by the native Japanese, the Ainu carry resemblance to the bearded Romans. A novel new civilization has grown from the synthesis of two precursor cultures.
That’s all for now! Join me next time when I play as the Ainu and fight to win the lands of the north!
