NationStates Jolt Archive

Antisuyu, "The Jungle Quarter", Northeastern Tahuantinsuyu

In another world this might have been the depths of Ecuador's Oriente region. In fact this was part of one of four states comprising the ancient and legendary empire of the Incas. Antisuyu, though supplying gold, wood, feathers, dyes, fruits, animal skins, and jungle-reared cotton to the empire was never the less considered savage, and as such it was built up with fortress cities set in the mountains rising at the end of the Amazonian darkness, established against the aggression of rainforest barbarians.

The Jungle Quater's inferior status was traditional, but in recent days it was eroded by the appointment of General Chalcuchima as Apu, or state governor. Chalcuchima was, by birth, a jungleman, and kept all the skills of his earthy roots while showing an unusual aptitude for imperial life. He was the strongest fighter in Antisuyu, perhaps in Tahuantinsuyu, and this had played no small part in his rise to such political heights as one amongst just four Apus across the vast empire. He was quick witted, fierce in appearance and intelligence but not frequently unfair to his inferiors. His poaching of Tahuantinsuyu's best minds during the war of succession in which he supported the victorious Pachacutec made sure that Chalcuchima's province enjoyed great progress in royal opinion, in infrastructure, and in militarisation.

Antisuyu had, of late, been a focus of foreign attention from civilisations that looked at the Antis and people of the wider empire much as they in turn regarded the jungle tribes and villages. Meeting the people of Aztlan for the first time had been a strange event bearing ill tidings, and great forces seemed set against Tahuantinsuyu. It had appeared as if the empire was in danger of invasion.

Between the trees, through the mountains, the wind was turning again...

* * * * *

"Ama Sua, Ama Kjella, Ama Lllulla." The meaning of the words themselves had little substance in context, but the sentiment was that of a traditional salutation-cum-blessing. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't be lazy. The Willaq Uma, the imperial high priest, saw-off Chalcuchima as a friend no less than as a warrior, but it was as a warrior that the General went. Carried atop an ornate litter and surrounded by guards in armour and weaponry more ceremonial than practical, he, terrifying with clever eyes dancing and broad shoulders hung in jungle-sourced feathers, drew his halberd through the air in a long, smooth motion, directing the first steps of sixty thousand pairs of sandled-feet in military ranks.

Into the jungle they marched, the new Sapa Inka, away in Qontisuyu, having deputised his most capable General, favourite statesman, to conduct the first expansion of this proud empire since the days of Spanish interference more than four centuries bygone. The Antis Apu went with Tahuantinsuyu's finest soldiery, men of barrel chests and epic stamina, lightning pace and eagle eyes, trained to crush skulls like jaguars, uniformed with black and white chequered tunics over quilted armour, protected further by fancifully ornate bronze helms and wooden square shields trimmed with bright feathers and painted skilfully, many armed by the empire with multi-role spears, long-range slings powerful enough to kill a Spanish horse, and mace or axe for single combat, while others took jungle weapons to fight the jungle men, having bows and blowguns with which to launch poison missiles. Different units wore different crests, different ranks wore medallions of different metals: tin, copper, bronze, silver, and gold. All the scene was bright and shining, and all the air was bruised with warlike music from drums, whistles, horns, and the big booming lungs of Inka's soldiers.

Completing the annexation of what the outside world called Ecuador may be no easy task, for the jungles had previously proved hard for armies of the Incas no less than for the Europeans, but sixty thousand warriors much outnumbered the entire population of the territory they approached, and it was territory well known to mighty Chalcuchima.

The Empire had not chosen to be disturbed, but once revealed again by the world, so the world was revealed to it, and the work of a millenia was restarted. The four corners must be stretched.

The movement of Chalcuchima's vast army was gradual. Sixty thousand, well, fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men walking, one seated on a litter, with amongst them more llamas than could be counted, all coming slowly down from the mountains and familiarising themselves with the humidity at the rim of the Amazon basin into which they were about to plunge.

They had all the time in the immortal and immovable empire of stone. Nothing changed, here, for generations at a stretch.

The barbarians weren't exactly going to come out and intercept the army.

Coming out of the relatively unforested foothills, the General's men and animals were resupplied by massive stone storehouses, some cut into solid rock, filled by virtue of the mita obligation that powered Tahuantinsuyu's economy. Some further weapons were also collected, along with local scouts and jungle men, and, for most of the army, the march was now into the unknown. A land of strange birds, giant reptiles, and primitive savages, and a land that the Sapa Inka demanded for his own.

"Illa, advance now!" "Yes, my liege! Forward, forward!"

Wearing a bronze medallion decorated with a stylised condor, the officer answering to the name Illa awkwardly waved his bronze-headed halberd in the direction of the enemy, struggling to avoid catching it in the branches of the forest into which the vanguard of Chalcuchima's army had advanced.

Forty men under Illa's command began to move forward in the best ranks they could manage given the vegetation, going at close as possible to a jog. Having found the close environment a detriment to the wielding of spears, and so Illa's men went with their maces and hand axes at the ready, some with bronze or bone daggars on the hip.

Soon they were hopping over their dead and wounded comrades half buried in the undergrowth, men wearing the helms or headdresses of the unit that went before Illa's, felled by darts and arrows launched against them by the local tribe of which Tahuantinsuyu hadn't bothered to learn the name. In fact two small comunities had come together in opposition to the Antis army, the forward part of which, stumbling blindly across tribal borders, was actually under attack from two sides.

The two communities in question could muster by arming all the healthy men in their villages a band of warriors slightly smaller than Illa's unit alone, almost two thousand times smaller than Chalcuchima's entire army, but they already had cut-down one scout party in its entirety, and now the first arrow loosed against Illa's men struck one above the right breast bone and sunk deep into his body, having missed the thick quilting that protected most of his ribs, chest, and stomach. Arrows were coming down from above, enemies hidden in the canopy, and, the traditional tactics of the empire proving useless, Illa was unable to prevent the rout of his unit.

Chalcuchima received word, less than two hours after ordering the vanguard into action, of the failures. He appeared unmoved, and was in fact unsurprised. The first action was hardly more than a respectful nod to tradition and propriety, following the imperial rulebook on war. Now the Antis Apu took control on his own initiative. He ordered another party in after Illa's, this time comprised of mediocre troops he felt unsuited to Amazonian warfare. Then another after them. Small parties that the defenders could fight-off, but pressing sufficiently that the enemy couldn't count their victories and withdraw, forcing them to defend their families behind. Other men were sent out in a wide arc with metal axes to begin felling trees around the combat area, still more, Chalcuchima's personally selected jungle men, moved off to search for settlements and track the warriors' paths to and potentially from the scene of battle.

Thousands simply waited, the General not trusting any of his deputies to lead the second column he wanted.

*I think that I had better bump this without any more information, just incase anyone is interested so far*

ooc: Couple questions,
What tech level is it(looks past tech but am not sure)?
What kind of response are you looking for?
Is it an story RP?
It's very good either way.

*Well, the pretense of my Nation State is an Inca (Tahuantinsuyu is the local name for the Inca Empire) victory over Pizarro's Conquistadores in the C16th thanks to a different outcome in the civil war at the time. I won't go into the details of that change, leading to centuries of isolationism and fear.

We have just recently been contacted by the likes of the Aztec National League and Kahanistan, and subjected to half-hearted attacks by other nations that seem to have lost interest.

I am not sure what sort of response I want, just interest, I suppose! Whatever reasonable things people can come up with.

As a note, our empire covers northern Chile (including the RL location of Santiago), northwestern Argentina, Western Bolivia, a tiny part of western Paraguay, Western Peru, almost all of Ecuador, and a tiny part of southern Colombia. Ecuador, I am assuming, doesn't exist as a nation since so little is left free, Chile is much different and puny, as is Bolivia, but Argentina, maybe Paraguay, and Colombia are almost normal. Eastern Peru is mostly savage, as well.

Ultimately I am hoping to expand Tahuantinsuyu to meet the Aztec borders in Panama, which means that, after this formality, we will have to attack Colombia (of which only a small part is Inkan territory), and we will probably get a big surprise in respect of modern technology.
And thank you for the compliment!

I'm not sure if that helped, much! Feel free to ask more questions if there is still confusion.*

To: The Tahuantinsuyu Empire
We notice you are attacking/annexing/pacifying the lands of Equador. While we do not have a problem with this territorial ambition, we would like to inform you that if we receive word of massacres of civilians or similiar atrocities, we will be quite likely to intervene.

Thank you and we wish you a nice day, Dominion of Theao..

*Ah, note that Tahuantinsuyu hasn't any telecommunications, ports, or airstrips, nor foreign embassies, so communication with the Empire is a significant undertaking in itself!*

OOC: Um, how should we contact you then...

*I just sent the Minister of Foreign Affairs on a ship with some guards, that worked. She's currently negotiating to build an iron processing plant there.

You might not want to send such a high-ranking official, but in general you want to use someone who speaks Spanish.

*I don't understand how you could possibly be confused, I mean, do you believe that the Athenians ever received a text message reading, "Ur ded! Cum out an fite! [Sparta]", or that Chamberlain received an E-mail from which he was able to infer, "Peace in our time!"? How do you contact Tahantinsuyu? Same way people have communicated since the dawn of intelligence.
Spanish works if you can find someone schooled at the Yachayhuasis of Cusco, Quechua would be better, but it's hard to imagine anyone outside the Empire having ever encountered that language.*

Days passed faster than yards of territory, but, slowly, slowly, Chalcuchima's forces advanced through the jungle. This wasn't like the campaigns of what the outside world called the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The barbarians were so few, so scattered, and, usually, so lacking in fighting skill and spirit.

When Antisuyu was annexed to the empire, the Antis people had fought furiously and frustrated the Inka's men at every encounter. They had never been really defeated in battle, just absorbed by culturally dominant Cusco.

It seemed to Chalcuchima, as he sent messages back to the distant capital, the no great Amazonian kingdoms were left. Perhaps the Spanish sickness, which killed tens of thousands from Tahuantinsuyu's population, had been even more cruel to the savages.

After a time, the last of what foreigners knew as Ecuador, most having belonged to the Empire for almost five hundred years, was finally under Incan occupation. But Chalcuhima had no knowledge of modern national borders, and his armies marched on into the extreme north and east of Peru, searching for new subject populations after disappointment in Ecuador. The remaining portions of Peru not yet under Cusco's administration at least offered more bodies and other resources.

These were strange bodies. The Tahuantinsuyus, still finding no more opposition than by some few villages unknown to the world, were now coming upon weird peoples.

Thousands of Incan warriors strode out of jungle into clearings and onto riverbanks, wearing their uniforms little changed since the days of the Conquistadores and bearing the same weapons, and found... poor people wearing pink shorts and Nike T-shirts, parts of tracksuits, charity hand-outs from the modern world to ruined aboriginals.

Chalcuchima was not impressed... but he did find this motorboat most interesting, much as the thick liquid it drank.

Chalcuchima's army, though stung by a few rare tribes with fight left in them and since more seriously harmed by several outbreaks of sickness that killed hundreds and sent thousands home to recover in the familiar mountain air, had taken little time in adding thousands of square kilometres to Tahuantinsuyu's extent. Antisuyu was now a really vast quarter, and boundaries might be soon redrawn to compensate.

All Ecuador and nearly the full extent of Peru were brought into the empire without serious battle, numerous skirmishes sometimes proving the superiority of truly primitive jungle warriors but always ending with victory for the epic numbers of the Inka's men.

Chalcuchima and his Antis rose in importance as never before. It was all going too well! From Qollasuyu, Apu Guaritito, resolved that he should not pale beside the lord of the jungle quarter, petitioned the Sapa Inka for permission to raise an army of his own and to head east to conquer for the empire under the flag of his quarter.

Only two days later, a reply carried affirmation of divine rightness, and Guaritito ordered Qollasuyu's generals to gather arms and prepare to march.

Shortly, all the lands assigned, by the outside world, the names Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia would be entirely within the empire. Northwestern Argentina, the extreme west of Paraguay, and a small part of the region called Colombia saw as yet no further expansion, but, in Chile, talk of a third campaign came now to the fore.

Chalcuchima's success was nearing completion in the north, everyone had confidence in that general, and he would rest before assembling a new army to confront these Colombians, whom the empire called Spaniards and wanted removed from the lands dividing Tahuantinsuyu from Aztlan. Guaritito was no military leader, but his generals, with their great numbers of ready men, should have no more difficulty in the east.

But, in the south, expansion would mean a renewed confrontation with the Mapuche, who had frustrated the empire's attempts to subjugate them in centuries past...

*I wonder, is there anyone who should be interested in working with or playing as the native Mapuche peoples in southern Chile?

Since they, in reality, frustrated both the Inca and the Spanish, and in this reality the Inca were able to repulse the Spaniards and prevent the rise of states like Chile, I am assuming that the Mapuche remained the independent masters of southern Chile. Only a small part of Argentina is within the Inca Emprie, so I've been assuming that Argentina did form more or less as in reality and the Mapuche there would still have become modernised, but, isolated over the mountains in amongst the forests, lakes, rivers, and islands of southern Chile they are able to survive in traditional style, as agriculturalists and workers of stone, organised in family groups.

Unless someone comes up with better theories, I am supposing that the remaining Mapuche number perhaps as many as five hundred thousand, and are essentially an advanced stone age culture. Sounds almost pathetic, however, they were the first native American people to achieve legal recognition of territorial sovereignty, they were never really beaten on the field of battle by the Inca or the Spanish, and proved willing and able to adapt their society (grouping usually remote communities together for defence) and military tactics (adopting tactics employed against them by more advanced enemies), so they could still be an interesting rival, braced behind the rivers cutting from Andes to Pacific.

If I can get this going, the Tahuantinsuyu (Incans) shall make a renewed attempt to subjugate the Mapuche, and foreign nations can involve themselves with either or both parties in some capacity.*

*Up for interest in the possibility of a renewed Incan attempt to subjugate the Mapuche*

OOC: you want modern tech players to help the locals?
if yes, i'm in, and will send a bunch of "advisors" down there to take command of their military. it could be interesting.

*Sort of. If anyone knows enough, I'd be happy for them to take partial control of the Mapuche, even.

The Mapuche don't actually have a military to take command of, and as even pre-feudal in structure, isolated, assaulted, and still brave warriors, there's nothing to say they'd certainly let anyone take command, anyway. It's a difficult situation, for sure! People are having enough trouble relating to the sophisticated bronze age empire of Tahuantinsuyu, let alone their primitive neighbours.

There's lots to bear in mind, however.

For example, you'll note that, further north, Chalcuchima's army has started to suffer serious casualties from illness (and, with little understanding of the mechanics, to send such casualties back into the empire's population to recover) after coming into contact with Indians who have themselves limited contact with the outside world. The independent Mapuche are an even more virgin population than the Tahauntinsuyus (we having suffered massive population reductions when the Spanish brought smallpox and other diseases). For all anyone knows, an outsider sneezing in southern Chile might kill half the independent Mapuche population.

Also, the Mapuche speak their own language (Mapudungu(n)), but since Argentina exists and has a small Mapuche minority, modern people do exist who understand it. It's just that there's only so many of them, and the language barrier will be a problem to tackle. After several centuries, the version spoken by the Chilean Mapuche will probably be slightly different from what people in Argentina remember, anyway.

The people are essentially stone age agriculturalists who live in wooden huts in family groups. They demonstrated in the past a willingness to group together, an ability to build basic fortifications, and a knack for learning from an enemy's tactics, and were able to use rivers as defence lines to frustrate typical Tahuantinsuyu frontal assaults and Spanish attacks.

Phew, that pretty much covers my useful information!*

OOC: ah, i see a better way to put my people in... here goes:

IC:
"sir, apparently, some low-tech natives in south america have started an epidemic on the continent, as well as a war."
"oh good, another continent in flames... can we help them?"
"it'll require the deployment of some military presence to run an operation vaccinating people, and a large military presence if we try to stop the fighting, sir"
"hmm. we cant spare many troops right now. will one legion be enough to distribute vaccines?"
"it should be sir, but it'll take a long time."
"well, its the best we can do right now. send a legion out with vaccines."
"aye aye sir. thank you."
"not a problem."

from a base in central NSAA, a large airlift begins, transporting the 75th legion and a huge amount of vaccines to an area just south of where the southern invading army is. the troops then begin spreading out in small patrols with supplies of vaccines to immunise the locals.

(ooc: and i'll leave off there. the patrols each consist of 3 land rovers 110GSs with 10 men per patrol, and there will be about 100 of them. other groups will range much further out to the south with helicopters. you might want to RP the meeting between one of my patrols, and some locals, or your men.)

Mapuche are, to say the least, surprised by the arrival of flying houses and strange-looking people in their land. The massing of Tahuantinsuyus forces near the frontier was bad enough, and most now assume the NSAA incursion to be part of some terrible invasion.

Quite possibly it will not be long before these foreigners pass on an illness to which the people have no immunity, but who is to say in advance which illness it might be? Ultimately such problems may prove to be small scale compared with the smallpox that almost crippled neighbouring Tahuantinsuyu five centuries earlier, but it is equally likely that several hundred thousand people spread across thousands of square kilometres of almost virgin mountain, forest, and islands will be afflicted at any moment.

It is many hundreds of miles to the north, in Antisuyu, that some yet unknown sickness is beginning to take hold in the Tahuantinsuyus population.

Qontisuyu

At Paccari-tampu, Apu Sinchi Yupanqui and the Sapa Inka himself had met the Kahanistanis and conducted the first international trade in the empire's modern history. Now it was from this southwestern quarter that the Inca lead his armies for the first time as undisputed claimant to the post.

Pachacutec, Lord of the Inca, with an army of no less than fifty thousand, was approaching the Maule river that marked the end of Tahuantinsuyu in the south. It would take time to gather the force there and take advantage of the southern-most supply houses in the empire before forcing a crossing.

General Ozcollo was given twenty-five thousand men to advance down the low coastal mountains and, ultimately, to address the question of the many islands (Tahuantinsuyu did not care for the sea, and nobody knew whether the islands, known to exist in some number, were even populated).

Apu Sinchi Yupanqui was to lead fifteen thousand men through the more difficult eastern mountains -the Andes- along the eastern extent of independent Mapuche territory... the borders of the Argentine Republic.

Ninety thousand Tahuantinsuyu warriors, equivalent to perhaps quarter of the entire Mapuche population, slowly assembled at three locations along the frontier, certainly visible to Mapuche scouts.

OOC: do you want to RP the locals meeting up with my patrols, or do you want me to do it?

*Well, so long as you remember who and what the locals are, you're free to play some of them, if you like. And if anyone else wants to get involved, it's still not too late. Sorry if it's a bit slow paced, that's the bronze age for you :) *