World Tour: Ninja Warriors

 Of all the civilizations in the new Middle Ages, Japan just might be the closest to the 20th century, chronologically. This is because right before the Meji restoration, and a concentrated effort towards industrialization and Westernization, Japan had spent centuries in enforced, strict isolation. This meant that it figured out the absolute zenith of workable feudal, agrarian society. There is one aspect however, is quite different from historical Japan. The legitimization of the Ninja.

 The popular image of the ninja was very much flourish, men wearing shadowy outfits, climbing up walls, using theatricality and mysticism, and weapons that seemed exotic and interesting. Strips malls and mail-in catalogs promised amazing Ninja secrets. In truth, the ninja costume was a stagehand uniform, the weapons often farm implements which were not particularly efficient. Those "Ninja Schools" of dubious historical veracity. And most of all, in Japan, Ninja were considered very, very dishonorable, the very antithesis of Bushido, even if it's believed everyone was doing it. However, Ninja were already becoming romantic figures in 19th century Japanese figures, like your Robin Hoods or Billy the Kids, and in the late 20th and early 21st century they were a major, major part of Japan's oversized reach a cultural soft power. More than one foreign dignitary would ask questions about Ninja, if they could maybe see one. These sort of questions might have led to Japan to re-enter isolation, but the Ninja would soon lose the stigma it had in the original feudal Japan. And those strip mall schools? Well, after 900 years they have indeed become ancient, and much more codified into techniques that actually work.

 Today, the dishonorable assassin are largely referred to, in the word that was actually much more common used, as "shinobi". In the new Middle Ages, Ninja might best be understood as something close to "Yeoman", but even this does not fully capture the unique nuances of the Japanese social order. But it's generally understood as an unmounted warrior who is neither the nobility nor strictly speaking, a peasant. Really, that's another thing to understand is that when Japan industrialized, it industrialized hard, and the concept of "middle class virtue and ethic" absorbed, it was absorbed by ninjutsu. They have their own schools, their own sports, their own units in armies, and the Japanese social order has adjusted them into being a fixture, not a subversion. The stagehand costumes aren't used, though similar outfits are worn for ceremonies or tournaments. But of course, the Ninja assassins still do exist. After all, individuals trained from childhood in deadly arts and in the ability to be inconspicuous are very useful for the Daiymo.

Winter Games

The Winter Games of the Olympic World

The ancient Olympic Games ended in the fourth century, casualties of Christianization and the outlawing of pagan festivals. Though the modern Olympics were nominally secular, they too faded—less from theology than from logistics. Globalism died, long-distance travel became impractical, and the number of sovereign states multiplied beyond any hope of coordination.

Yet the spirit of the Games endured.

Italy, China, Russia, and the United States are the cultures most often said to have kept the literal flame alive. Their successors independently arrived at similar conclusions about what was required to sustain such Games:

1. Large, dense urban populations

2. Republican or highly bureaucratic systems (as opposed to feudal ones, which favor tourneys)

3. A historical memory of Olympic success, producing nostalgia and a desire to remake the Games in one’s own image

Not coincidentally, all of these regions experience harsh winters or lie close to alpine terrain. Their cities and infrastructure exist because of the cold, not in spite of it. Frozen rivers, snowbound roads, and long idle seasons demanded planning, discipline, and public works. These same conditions gave rise to athletic traditions the ancient Greeks never imagined.

In many ways, the Chinese Bingxi serves as the organizational model for these Winter Games—even where the individual events themselves draw more heavily from Scandinavian precedent.

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Major Winter Events

Speed Skating
The most prestigious of all winter events, and often the most dangerous. In rougher cultures, physical contact is permitted; in more restrained republics, balance and endurance are emphasized instead.

Skiing
Primarily cross-country, reflecting its origins in transport and messaging. Downhill racing exists, but is usually confined to mountainous regions and regarded as somewhat reckless.

Sledding
A hill-based sport emphasizing control and nerve. In flatter regions, it is sometimes adapted for draft animals or heavy cargo, blurring the line between labor and competition.

Curling
A contest of strength, precision, and teamwork. Often favored by more bureaucratic societies, where its measured, rule-bound nature is appreciated.

Tilly / Jersey
The combat sport of the Winter Games.

• Tilly allows strikes and is popular in harsher cultures.

• Jersey forbids punching, instead permitting grappling by straps or harnesses.
  Either way, the ice punishes mistakes severely.

Figure Skating
The only major Winter Games discipline in which women routinely compete. Even here, “competition” is considered a vulgar term. The emphasis is on grace, control, and expression rather than quantification.
Some regions award personalized honors (“Most Fluid,” “Most Inspiring”); others let the audience decide through gifts, patronage, or even marriage proposals. Prestige accrues regardless. Notably, Japan—despite its otherwise insular sports culture—retained figure skating almost intact.

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The Vikings will sometimes travel across the world to compete in these Winter Games. After all, their ancestors invented many of them. Some are required to convert to the local faith in order to participate.

They do so anyway.

Free drinks for life. Thor would understand.

World Tour: The Pharaonic Revival

America is a very large place, and so in the New Middle Ages, the collapse saw its subregions lean into their more distinc idenities. In the Old World, reliving its old Middle Ages, the borders weren't always particularly big, so they embraced national identities that already existed. You also see this trend throughout Muslim countries who have largely drifted away from any dream of a Pan-Arabic Caliphate, at this point too many centuries of conflicting doctrine, too many cultures under the fold of Islan.

The New Kingdom did not occupy the minds of Medieval Egyptians. Why would it have? They were a conquered power under just like they were under the Roman, the Greeks, the Persians, and would be under the Ottomans and the Brits. But the dawn of the 20th century saw three major events: Dependence and self-governance, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, and relatedly, aforementioned Europeans digging up their stuff and putting it in their own museums. This led to a movement known as Pharaonism, a sense of national identity, and continuity with one of the oldest civilizations on the planet. Over the next century there been tension between this nationalism and being part of the greater Muslim society. However, Egypt being ruled by Egyptians after so long was just not something they were going to let get away from them. Time had taught them, like a lead in a romantic comedy, if they didn’t claim Ancient Egypt, somebody else would.  

 Also, the collapse of industrialization saw a real back to basics approach to infrastructure, agriculture and healthcare. And you can’t go much further back than Ancient Egypt. Shadufs and saqiyas were low tech answers to harnessing the Nile River, and even ancient herbal remedies and dental practices that were advanced for the time but could do in a pinch instilled a reverence for this ancient civilization.

There are no Pharaohs, nobody worships Anubis. In fact, something like the Golden Parade in 2021 would be out of the question. But Pharonic motifs abound throughout the cities. Lotus columns and Obelisks surround libraries, market plazas, various “tourist destinations”. The silhouettes are firmly halal, but do evoke the kings and queens of old. Hieroglyphs surround wrap around clothing an architecture, Repoussé  jewelry, sometimes depicting animal heads (abstract enough to not to be controversial, and positioned as the clasp to be functional), as well as scarabs and wings are very common.

Perhaps the greatest outlet for New Kingdom romanticism is in their games and sport—real state sanctioned frivolity. Children are taught to play Senet, and wrestling (itself encouraged by the Prophet Mohammad, within reason), and of course, chariots, both racing and archery. Though more popular in Roman times, the arenas, the uniforms, and the chariots themselves really allow them to fully embrace the pomp of Ancient Egypt, and well as serve as a unifying space for the citizens, from all backgrounds.
 It’s very important for everyone to be on team Egypt, so the regimes try to take a page from an-Andulis, allowing for a certain degree of protection from institutionalized persecution upon its Coptic population. These People of the Book are themselves part of Egypt’s long history, and it’s important all Egyptians put up a united front, especially the tax paying ones.

The New Viking Age

 One might expect a Viking revivalism to be the last thing to pop up in the New Middle Ages...after all, it petered out before the High Middle Ages even got going. But a sort of perfect storm ended up materializing. In the 20th Century, one of the coldest places on Earth became one of the most comfortable. The Nordic Countries’ standard of living was the worldwide metric. What was once the scourge of Europe was now only a scourge to those who found Ikea and Abba too tacky. They took civilization’s collapse pretty hard. Its renown health care gone. Imported goods no longer avilable. Fertilizer for crops and energy for homes made life in Scandinavia much more cozy, and the culture shock was pretty galvanzing. For many, people who could not feed their children with what the frozen ground was offering, the way of the axe, of sailing to greener pasture, was the way to go.

Interestingly, in Industrial Age Europe. Most of the Germanic countries are also the most Protestant, and the most Protestant countries the most secular. Protestantism, a movement largely helped by the printing press and revolutionary ideals, found itself a victim of decentralization and the “Easter and Christmas” habits of their casual congregations. Sometimes, the Catholic Church would come in, occupying these  empty Churches and abonened kirks. Some would become more radical and firebrand in their Christianity. And some went back in to the family attics for the Old Gods. The Norse Pantheon, had been taught to every Scandinavian child, much more than the various Saints. Odin and Thor were famed worldwide everything in everything Opera to comic books was a source of pride for the Scandinavians, and for the first few centuries, anyone who might protest this roundabout to paganism was too weak or too distant.

While the image of Vikings as Barbaric Raiders that burned villages to the ground is the most prominent in people’s imaginations, they were entrepeneurs as much as they were warriors, with vast trade networks. They also tended to sell their swords, and kingdoms like Normandy and the Kievan Rus were built by these mercenary bands. In the old Middle Ages, their voyaging led them to Greenland, where the Little Ice Age, and inability to get along with the Inuit population saw the Greenland colonies die, and the Viking Age was officially brought to a close. However, in the New Middle Ages, Greenland is no longer a cold, barren rock on the edge of the known world, but a waystation between both halves of Western civillization. “Vinland” offers the riches of Virginia, Manhattan and the Carolinas, Non-Denominational churches to pilfer, city states offering mercenary contracts, and Caribbean Islands to combine various eras of piracy. Of course, the cycle of history continues, and Scandinavia has, over the centuries, re-Christianized, especially the royal houses, but the wayfinders still exist as a nebulous fleet. Trading, colonizing, and storming the gates, like a Dutch East India company with beards and braids.

World Tour

-In most of the world, the New Middle Ages were merely a rerun of the Old Middle Ages. In England and Japan, the constitutional monarchies dumped their constitutions. Europeans turned again to the Roman Catholic Church for guidance. Camels plodded along the caravan routes of the Middle East, bringing silk from China and pilgrims to Mecca, just as they did a thousand years ago. In America, however, Middle Ages were a new experience. 

This is a statement from the very introduction to the Atlas of Medieval America. It's also a very loaded one. While we can definitely look America as very unique in a world that has returned to Castles and Cathedrals, Sulatans and Shoguns, but there's definitely nuances to unpack. 500 years of new religions, revolutions, even genocides, where the bell simply can't be unrung. It can also be said that the Middle Ages themselves, at a thousand years certainly saw countless fluctations: The rise and fall of empires, plagues, revolutions in technology. So to some extent what a "rerun of the Middle Ages" means could imply a lot. The Middle Ages of Alfred of Wessex or the War of the Roses? The Middle Ages of the Ten Kingdoms or the Mongol Empire? Definitely painting with broad strokes.

There's also places, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere that were colonized just as much as America, though the populations are considerablly smaller. So the next couple of articles are going to look at the ripples, where things are surprisingly like the Old Middles Ages, where it's just down far down the rabbit hole, and where the old and the new converge in surpising ways. So next month, or the new year, I'll have series of posts looking at the rest of the world in the year 2900; We'll be looking at

Europe: A surprising Viking revival, brought about by geographical essentialism, the void left by Protestantism and Secularim, and the need for global couriers in a de-globalized world.

Africa: The yokes of colonialism have been thrown off. The West has has retreated, even the Muslim World is much more divided than its Golden Age. The Legacy of an Egypt that was ruled by Egypt the last century, and the rise of the Ethopian Church.

Asia: The legacies of Bollywood, K-Pop, Anime and Kaiju are actually quite congruent with their millennia old civillization.

Latin America: Can largely be divided along three metrics; The interior jungles are almost completely reverted to the Pre-Columbian model. Mexico and Peru, heirs to grand Pre-Columbian civillizations and once key nodes of the Spanish Empire, are re-living a Middle Ages they arguably did belatedly experience. And then there this is the Southern cone, located in

Sub-Capricona: Argentina, Australia, and South Africa. Temeparate, attractive for European ranchers, now on the other side of the world. In many ways, a strange reflection of Medeval Aerica.

Here Be Monsers Revisit

 So let's take another look at at the "Here Be Monster" category. The only published article is the Jackalope, itself an easter egg looking at the Nomadic Herdsmen page. You can see the map here, with five overall locations, each a monster, some kind of American Cryptid or folktale creature: Bigfoot, Mothman, The Jersey Devil, and "Roswell", which is what the picture is labelled, it's what the reserved url is, and obviously supposed to be a Space Alien. (It is interesting the location, not the creature is named, and the style of our little Green Man is quite different) When I first started the blog, the younger me was certainly of the "more is more" mindset, posting an article suggesting even more monsters to cover. I haven't walked back on that necessarily, but I do constantly wander back and forth on what America's "Haunted Mythology Canon" should be. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the Bell Witch, the Amityville House and perhaps an Edgar Allen Poe story or two should be prioritzed in crafting a core haunted lore for Medieval America.

Now the "big three" of Cryptids are Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti. Two of these are not American, though presumably a Medieval American has probably heard of them. There are actually "Lake Monsters" around the world, in fact many of their sigthting pre-dating the Nessie craze. In Medieval America it's possible people believe all these Lake Creatures or Sea Serpents are one species--maybe the more whimsical even believe it's the same being (or family of beings) that traverse the world's lakes through magic or underground tunnels. And as for the Yeti, something interesting to note is that the actual mythical Yeti is 1) Supposed to be red or brown, not white as is often depicted in media, and 2) Some works even depict them as living in the Arctic, not the Himalayas. This is likely because it's a very striking visual (especially contrasted with Bigfoot) and because of the "Abominable Snowman" name. Funny enough, the Wendigo is sometimes depiced as a shaggy white Bigfoot creature (notably the Marvel Comics version), which is of course, also a drift from the Algonquin myth. But after 900 years we could probably expect some kind of "Albino Sasquatch" to be in the canon.

I've also talked about the "Universal Monster" type monsters and the back and forth in influence of vampires, werewolves, Frankensein, and even the Mummy.  (I've since learned about cases like Elmer McCurdy, the Wild West Outlaw who also became a travelling Mummy, therefore strengthening a Mummy that combines Egyptian and Peruvian aspects into a New Mexico creature). And I don't want to discount the possibility of "Slasher villains" like Jason Voorhes and Michael Meyers slipping into Country lore. And then there's the Zombie, probably the closest to  "homegrown" classic monster.

And on a somewhat silly but provocative note, there is the franchise Pokemon or "Pocket Monsters". As it is many of its myriad of creatures are drawn from genuine myth, usually from Japan (like the Vulpix and Mawile) but some also evoke Western myths as well (Like Chamander). Now I'm largely of the opinion that, if popular culture were to be implimented into the Mediaval American tapestry, video games and anime should definitely be at the lower end. However, I seem more and more to come across hobby shops, even in fairly rural or small town "main streets", with Pikachu imagery on the storefront window. Pikachu could very well be displacing the old man on the porch in the rocking chair. So what this means in the Medieval America setting is folklore about elemental type creatures summoned--maybe through the "bag of holding physics" or maybe they just do fit in people's pocket, catching on as companions, or perhaps more likely, (and fitting in with the "spooky" and "monstrous" theme, the unexplained cause for ruined crops and rusty nails.

Warlords

 Something that has been on mind about the Atlas of Medieval America is the way the table of contents is presented. First you have a section about the Great Plains, the most thorough look into the world. This is actually a great introduction to Medieval America, it establishes this isn't a copypasta of the Middle Ages, it's not Lord of the Rings just plopped into Nebraska. And you can't get much more American than the Cowboy. The second sub-section covers the United States (as the smaller, thalassocratic republic), and the Non-Denominational Church. Both remnants of the Federal government, but thematically, the two are linked as well. As much as those in the Heartland protest, the urban corridor of the East coast as is as quintessentially American.. It's the America of FDR, Barack Obama, Martin Scorsese, in the same way the New Israelites are the America of Andrew Jackson and John Wayne.

For a while I've reasoned how this can be presented in something like a TV miniseries or coffee table book. The Plains, the U.S., what are other "episodes" that can be looked at? And as I looked at White's section for "styles of government", it hit me that the Secretarial States and Hydraulic Empires are both largely in America's "Sun Belt".  And I believe a fourth "episode" could focus on the vast and esoteric religious pluralism which includes the Hydraulic Empires, but also the Pacific Northwest. So I wondered what another section could be. Then it hit me. The Warlords.

Of the pages White has created, he has largely tried to focus on things that 1) Are quintessentially American, 2) Rather alien to what we think of when we hear "Middle Ages", 3) Completely fictional to this world. And I think looking at the pages and maps, we do have a very, very good idea on what Medieval America looks like (Though I'll always wonder about Boston and Providence.) We know what knights and castles look like, and the variations from the standard are probably not vast. But there are variations, and 

First, I think it's very important to really examine the signifance of the word "Warlord". It's not an immediately strange one, it's a word often used to describe historical and fantasy settings. It's used in the opening titles for Xena: Warrior Princess. But the first recorded instance of the term was Ralph Waldo Emerson, more than ten years after the invention of the telegraph. It really caught on in the 1920's, to describe the breakdown of post-Imperial China, and usually to described failed states, but often applied retroactively, with very little resitance, to feudal or barbarian type societies. It may have been a very deliberate choice on White's part to use a word that post-dates more modern or mundane sounding terms like "President", "Secretary" and "District Supervisor" but seamlessly evokes something medieval.

So I think it's generally important in the context of the project to avoid using it "generically", and should be stricly for the warrior class that dominates the Eastern half of America. (Note: It's kind of sort of indirectly applied to the rulers of the Desert region, but it can maybe be shrugged off) Generally speaking, the armored, warriors of the Feudal Core and surrounding areas. The United States, even its chivalric cass, are not ruled by Warlords, strictly speaking. Quebec probably isn't (They're not super concerned with claining the throne of Michigan, they just want Quebec to remain Quebec). New Jersey...maybe. 

Ultimately, the the sort of "niche" of the Walords is, on one hand, the most quintessentially and conventionally medieval of the Atlas. But, themtically, evoking the Americana there's a few elements to consider

-If the U.S. and the Church are Blue State-coded: Education, unity, civility, and the Cowboys are Red State-coded: Rugged individualism, fundementalist Christianity, the Warlords are sort of the "swing state" voters. Think of them as Union or teasmter types who are generationally Democrat but some might like the cut of Trump's gib.

- Of course, there's what you might cal a  G.I. Joe vibe as well, and one can presume (especially as "Colonel" is a high ranking title in this world) that many of these Warlords arose from the kind of militias that usually arise in survivalist fiction.

- I think another very American thing to draw from would be the overall sports culture. A few helmets, shoulder pads, and hockey masks might have been implimented by soldiers, and migh have gone on to the foundation for future arms. I've acually established tournmants are following the American football season. Also, white's own illustrations show that some heraldly is inspired by sports teams, and American heraldly might be more succint and bold, sort of like the bannermen from A Song of Ice & Fire. New Jersey born author George R.R. Martin is also a major fan of comic books. This migh also be a slight but very distinct way the American feuda overlords present themselves.