Haggis
01-06-2011, 07:44 AM
This thread is for the official entries and scenarios.
Constructive criticism, ideas and suggestions go in the Symposium thread, while the usual "Nice work!"-comments and anything else that's not intended to add to the debate goes in the General Chat thread.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
WE SOME MILLIONAIRES NOW Y'ALL!
Things Are a Little Different Here:
“So, the world ended. These things happen. Devastation was the way of all things, the sky fell, tornadoes swept down from Satan’s jeweled crown and plague devoured the nations. What are you gonna do except pick up and rebuild?
Our populations stabilized within fifty years. We doubled in size for the first time fifty years later. From there we grew and pretty soon we were all fighting again. Into this new world empires emerged. In our devastated souls new gods clawed and spilled forth. From the loins of thousands came new races, in the hearts of the fearless ape new hatreds stirred.”
The end of all civilized life precipitated a demographic collapse everywhere. Food becomes scarce, resources on the ground are thin, and populations migrate. The southeastern United States was no different. The details are not entirely important. Refugees from everywhere flooded everywhere else.
Culture and language transformed and many regional identities were lost.
However, there was one saving grace. When everything began ending a few governments decided that the quickest way to rebuild would be to arm the peoples against hunger. A diverse group of world governments encouraged farmers to diversify, agricultural subsidies ended and new hybrid crops and heartier cultivars introduced. Livestock tailored to flourish and thrive in a given region flourished and thrived. Pamphlets on how to construct various high powered firearms on a lathe, build a still to purify water, run your cars on alcohol, give birth at home, recognize cholera, fight malaria, construct a drought resistant garden helped, a lot.
The information to adapt to a world without oil, security and global trade was available. All that was left was the application.
Introduced species filled ecological niches devastated by millions of hungry refugees. Those that adapted often exhibited new behaviors that helped them survive in the new ecosystems. Asian carp and some species of Congolese catfish; notably the vundu (Heterobranchus longifilis) are established in the Mississippi River and its major tributaries. Genetically engineered diadromous catfish species like the Olboy (Heterobranchus invictus) and the John Hulk Huca (Ictarulus tribus) are popular sources of protein for millions. Diadromous fish travel between salt and fresh water during their life cycle. So both species migrate regularly between the Mississippi its tributaries and the Gulf of Mexico; the Olboy and John Hulk are a hearty breed able to maintain small populations in the lower Great Lakes. Kangaroos populate the Southwest and have populations penetrating deep into the regions known as Texas and Oklahoma where they serve as a source of leather and meat. Hyenas are everywhere and some attempts at pre-Fall domestication resulted in smaller semi-domesticated breeds.
Ratites are the primary example of this adaptation cycle. Ostriches in Africa were usually solitary animals in the wetter winter months and traveled in groups or in herds with other large animals in times of scarcity. The New World Ostriches, those that have adapted to their new habitats in the Americas, are found in a variety of locations on both continents but thrive in grasslands like the Great Plains or the Pampas.
The ostriches typically gather in large herds. On the Plains ostriches typically reside close to buffalo and buffalo hybrid herds, these are usually interspersed with wild camas and various cameloids. On the Pampas ostriches gather with native cattle herds and introduced species like zebra. Rhea are another ratite species that established itself well in North America, originally from South America the species spread north through trade and introductions by merchants farming them for leather and meat.
Cultivated grains and vegetables have also diversified; corn, wheat, rice, legumes and potatoes are still the premier and most important crops for many post-Apocalypse farmers. Most states keep a national seed bank and communal food security is common. Hybrid crops like triticale are cultivated and pseudo-cereals have become increasingly popular. Buckwheat (fagopyrum esculentum), amaranth (amaranthus), sorghum (sorghum bicolor), breadnuts (brosimum alicastrum), and cockscomb (celosia spicata) have all found their way into the affections and stomachs of the survivors for their ease of growth and high nutritional value. Cockscomb is particularly popular as a way to fight off various tapeworms and other intestinal maladies.
The societies that arose in this new world reflect not only the cultural foundation of their pre-Apocalypse ancestors but the stark and sometimes surprising realities of their world.
Almost all of the societies on the North American continent developed a sophisticated gun culture. Low cost of production of firearms, availability of gunpowder (be it black or smokeless) and the fact that it is easier to learn how to use a gun than a sword all contribute to the egalitarianism and gender equality found within many cultures and may also explain why republics, ethnic enclaves, and city-states are common.
Complicated social hierarchies are inherent in any culture; however in this world the dominance of the warrior castes is a rarer event than in ages past. In fact, warrior castes are quickly losing popularity in many places. The relative ease of defense and prevalence of the citizen-soldier has relegated professional and hereditary warriors to a spot on the lower nobility in most cultures and warrior-kings are almost unheard of outside of barbarian raiding groups.
Instead it is the merchant that dominates. Trade influences all things and the accumulation of wealth can easily buy an army from the various disparate and hamstringed mercenary/bandits that often inhabit the wastes.
When it is not the merchant it is the priest. The world fucking ended and this scarred a few people; by a few people I mean everyone who survived and their grandchildren. Emotional scars from the End of Civilization and the horror of the world after the Fall haunted mankind for generations. Many turned to faith, any faith, to cope in the wilderness.
Religious figures gained prominence everywhere and new communities organized along the thousand paths that the peoples walk. Faiths as disparate as the monolithic Catholic Church and the lesser ethnic and linguistic churches, cobbled together from pre-Fall mysticism, pop culture and half remembered religions, dominate the souls of men and then land under their feet. Theocracies were common and powerful for almost a century all over the Southeast and parts of the Midwest. Though secular authorities gained power in most areas some theocratic states continue to thrive and clergy are a powerful force in many areas.
Say what you want about people but we sure do love getting sexy. And when everything wasn’t anymore some folks needed sweet, sweet interracial consolation. The southeastern states were especially good for this sort of thing. Much like the western US there’s a lot more ethnic diversity than in that great Midwestern blizzard of Germans, Poles and other very cold people.
Growing Latino, Asian and other immigrant populations only add to the stew. Some small fishing towns on the Gulf are a third Vietnamese. Haitians, Cubans and other Caribbean peoples already have large footholds in Florida and parts of coastal Georgia. Korean and Chinese signs litter the countryside in rural Alabama and Kenyans own a lot of gas stations in Shelby County. New Orleans attracts every kind of immigrant. Add this to the primary ethnic groups already in the region, southern whites and southern blacks, and the widespread and multiple examples of extreme ethnogenesis come as no surprise.
Of course this ignores the widespread internal migrations to the southern states. Many Yankees form culturally distinct enclaves within larger cities and suburbs and may have limited contact with the more rural natives. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee all already have substantial Yankee populations in certain regions and this trend will probably continue. This resulted in a culturally distinct white settler group. Most of these Yankees are urban occupants and will form a unique separate ethnic group in many parts of the Southeast.
As it stands there are a variety of groups forming the new ethnic, linguistic and cultural roles of the post apocalyptic world. Keep in mind that terms may overlap and carry different connotations in different regions. Let’s examine the current major groups of the Southeast:
Crackers – The surviving members of the white population with high concentrations in northern Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and north Florida. While they are usually considered “white” most Crackers have some Blacks in their ancestry but to a much lesser extent than the racially mixed Redbones along the Gulf Coast. In the Cracker Corridor through central Tennessee the term has come to mean any English speaking native that is not a Tarheel. Crackers have a distinct accent and practice a variety of faiths, mostly descended from Protestantism with healthy helpings of culture heroes as lesser local deities. Crackers often speak in the formalized English of Mobile amongst their own groups. A variety of accents exist with influences from Miameno (Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican) Spanish, some Caribbean patois and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Many Cracker groups have adopted a uniform lunar calendar with thirteen months of twenty-eight days.
Tarheel – Commonly thought of as a subset of the Cracker ethnic group. The Tarheels migrated west from coastal populations of the Upper South and central Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. Tarheels have endemic population concentrations in western Tennessee, the western portions of the Carolinas and Virginia. The City of Atlanta resettled some mercenary Tarheel tribes in central Georgia, south of the Thousand Peaches, a century and a half ago. It can be difficult to tell Crackers and Tarheels apart. Both have similar roots but with a few important differences. Tarheels have distinctive accents and speak a highly tonal form of English with Chicano (Mexican) Spanish influence. Most Tarheel tribes follow a stylized descendant of Presbyterianism and keep a revived Julian calendar.
Damjanc – Remnants of the urban Yankee populations that have settled alongside the Tarheel. After several centuries of intermarriage the Damjanc are just Tarheel sub-tribes with peculiar cultural practices and a nasal accent. Damjanci are distinguished by their strange vocabulary. Examples include the use of “yous” instead of the formal “yal.” Damjanci are also notorious for their Catholicism and some Tarheel feel threatened by Chicano, Texan, and other foreign priests serving the Damjanci communities in their midst. Some Damjanc tribes include the Yaup (Yoopers), Maksa (from Maxey, the last name of a guy in Michigan with 400 kids), Bransch (Bronx) and the Ussican (Sussex County, Delaware).
Blacks – A small ethnic designation as many Black communities in the Southeast have merged culturally with native white populations and once again in the Cracker Corridor the term is used to describe both mostly white and mostly black natives. Though cultural differences do exist, mostly regarding developed religious and magic ritual. In areas with a surviving separate Black community most multiracial children are raised in the mother’s community and these unions result in small population transfers of men amongst both groups.
Redbones – The largest ethnic group in the Mobile Compact States, the Free Cities of Mimifas-Tonaca and Greater Nawlins and one of the largest groups in the Southeast. Redbones are a result of the vast similarities in culture between the two major ethnic groups in the Deep South. Racial admixture is nothing new to the region and rates of intermarriage are growing. Five hundred years later and both groups have merged almost completely. Redbone may denote a regional identity as well established Cracker and Black families living in largely Redbone regions, like the Black Belt and the Mississippi Delta, have been self-identifying as Redbones for generations.
Chicanos/Miamenos – The native Spanish speaking groups of the Southeast. Both have separate dialects and widely dispersed populations that are individually affected by other groups. Chicanos are descendants of post-Fall Mexican migrants. Many Chicanos are descended from the Mestizos and Indigenas of Mexico and Central America. White Mexicans assimilated into the Cracker group rather easily. The largest Chicano population is east of the Thousand Peaches and is another example of Atlanta importing a buffer state. Land grants, a series of expulsions of the settled Redbones and friendly relations with the Catholic Church remnants led to increased immigration and a slight Chicano majority. The Miameno population is much larger and has several well established population centers. Miamenos are descendants of Spanish speaking Caribbean peoples. Cubans make up the largest heritage group with Dominicans and Puerto Ricans tying for second. Southern Florida has the largest Miameno population where they form almost ninety percent of the population. The Panhandle contains the second largest Miameno group and another large population exists south of contemporary Jacksonville. Almost all Gulf Coast cities have a Miameno section of town, usually called an Asucriton [1] and particularly fertile areas may have caminedors [2] in the hinterland.
Nguoi Den – The “Black People” are an ethnic group concentrated on the banks of the Mississippi River from northeast Louisiana and southwest Mississippi to the eastern part of the Arkansas Delta. As their endonym is in Tieng Viet the surrounding English and Spanish speakers usually call them Wohten or Wudanos and they commonly use the word Den “people” in casual talk amongst themselves. Like the Redbones the Nguoi Den are a multiracial group and are the result of large scale Vietnamese immigration in the 21st and 22nd centuries and racial admixture between the Vietnamese and black and white Americans after the Fall. A hybrid culture emerged with the new hybrid population and a specific English dialect emerged with influences from Vietnamese, AAVE and Southern English. Most Nguoi Den practice a syncretic mix of Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Southern Baptist Conference theology, Church of God and other surviving Protestant branches. Like most post-Fall religions there is a focus on the End of the World and the need to rebuild society. The Den practice extensive rice cultivation and catfish aquaculture. Den attempts to spread into central Mississippi brought them into losing conflict with caminedors and Redbones and moved them into the Nawlins sphere of influence. A decent sized diaspora developed extending into Nawlins and up the Mississippi River with a few trading outposts in Missouri.
Khmer Atunga – The Khmer Atunga are an ethnically, linguistically and culturally Cambodian group that has established itself around Lake Okeechobee and practice a conservative form of Theravada Buddhism. The Atunga have an antagonistic history with their neighbors, Cracker and Miameno alike, but have held onto the Lake Okeechobee region almost since the Fall. As the only Cambodian region in the Southeast the continued independence of the Khmer Atunga is essential for the survival of their culture and people. If they are conquered they will be dispersed and within a few generations be gone.
Africos – Caribbean people of African descent that have settled in the Fort Lauderdale area and speak a regional dialect of English and often know Miameno Spanish for convenience of trade. The Africos maintain a close relationship with their island dwelling cousins and receive large amounts of immigrants from the islands. This influx of migrants ensures Africo population growth and prevents this English speaking minority from being engulfed by the much larger Miamenos.
Other – Varieties of ethnic and linguistic minorities exist outside of these major groups and can be found throughout the Southeast.
[1] From the Miameno Spanish (MES) word for sugar “asucri” mixed with the Mobile Standard Dialect (MSD) word for town “ton” this reflects the significant Miameno involvement in the sugar trade. With extensive contacts in the Caribbean and sugar plantations in the former Everglades the Miamenos have become synonymous with sugar.
[2] These are pretty much Cuban trekboers. The term comes from the MES word “camineda” or a Long Walk; caminedors are Miameno farmers forced out of their traditional homelands by the lack of land and the economic domination of the large plantation-merchant elite. Though they style themselves as valiant pioneers most states consider them squatters and caminedors are always getting into scratch-ups with local militias. They’re a huge problem in central Mississippi and in the last sixty or seventy years migration to the fertile rice plains by poor farmers has resulted in a sudden demographic shift. This shift was made possible by two factors, the sacred place of the cinchona in the Miameno culture and their extensive cultivation of it making malaria a negligible threat and the recent collapse of the rice market and unexpected corn blight resulted in many former inhabitants moving to the larger cities on the Mississippi River.
Constructive criticism, ideas and suggestions go in the Symposium thread, while the usual "Nice work!"-comments and anything else that's not intended to add to the debate goes in the General Chat thread.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
WE SOME MILLIONAIRES NOW Y'ALL!
Things Are a Little Different Here:
“So, the world ended. These things happen. Devastation was the way of all things, the sky fell, tornadoes swept down from Satan’s jeweled crown and plague devoured the nations. What are you gonna do except pick up and rebuild?
Our populations stabilized within fifty years. We doubled in size for the first time fifty years later. From there we grew and pretty soon we were all fighting again. Into this new world empires emerged. In our devastated souls new gods clawed and spilled forth. From the loins of thousands came new races, in the hearts of the fearless ape new hatreds stirred.”
The end of all civilized life precipitated a demographic collapse everywhere. Food becomes scarce, resources on the ground are thin, and populations migrate. The southeastern United States was no different. The details are not entirely important. Refugees from everywhere flooded everywhere else.
Culture and language transformed and many regional identities were lost.
However, there was one saving grace. When everything began ending a few governments decided that the quickest way to rebuild would be to arm the peoples against hunger. A diverse group of world governments encouraged farmers to diversify, agricultural subsidies ended and new hybrid crops and heartier cultivars introduced. Livestock tailored to flourish and thrive in a given region flourished and thrived. Pamphlets on how to construct various high powered firearms on a lathe, build a still to purify water, run your cars on alcohol, give birth at home, recognize cholera, fight malaria, construct a drought resistant garden helped, a lot.
The information to adapt to a world without oil, security and global trade was available. All that was left was the application.
Introduced species filled ecological niches devastated by millions of hungry refugees. Those that adapted often exhibited new behaviors that helped them survive in the new ecosystems. Asian carp and some species of Congolese catfish; notably the vundu (Heterobranchus longifilis) are established in the Mississippi River and its major tributaries. Genetically engineered diadromous catfish species like the Olboy (Heterobranchus invictus) and the John Hulk Huca (Ictarulus tribus) are popular sources of protein for millions. Diadromous fish travel between salt and fresh water during their life cycle. So both species migrate regularly between the Mississippi its tributaries and the Gulf of Mexico; the Olboy and John Hulk are a hearty breed able to maintain small populations in the lower Great Lakes. Kangaroos populate the Southwest and have populations penetrating deep into the regions known as Texas and Oklahoma where they serve as a source of leather and meat. Hyenas are everywhere and some attempts at pre-Fall domestication resulted in smaller semi-domesticated breeds.
Ratites are the primary example of this adaptation cycle. Ostriches in Africa were usually solitary animals in the wetter winter months and traveled in groups or in herds with other large animals in times of scarcity. The New World Ostriches, those that have adapted to their new habitats in the Americas, are found in a variety of locations on both continents but thrive in grasslands like the Great Plains or the Pampas.
The ostriches typically gather in large herds. On the Plains ostriches typically reside close to buffalo and buffalo hybrid herds, these are usually interspersed with wild camas and various cameloids. On the Pampas ostriches gather with native cattle herds and introduced species like zebra. Rhea are another ratite species that established itself well in North America, originally from South America the species spread north through trade and introductions by merchants farming them for leather and meat.
Cultivated grains and vegetables have also diversified; corn, wheat, rice, legumes and potatoes are still the premier and most important crops for many post-Apocalypse farmers. Most states keep a national seed bank and communal food security is common. Hybrid crops like triticale are cultivated and pseudo-cereals have become increasingly popular. Buckwheat (fagopyrum esculentum), amaranth (amaranthus), sorghum (sorghum bicolor), breadnuts (brosimum alicastrum), and cockscomb (celosia spicata) have all found their way into the affections and stomachs of the survivors for their ease of growth and high nutritional value. Cockscomb is particularly popular as a way to fight off various tapeworms and other intestinal maladies.
The societies that arose in this new world reflect not only the cultural foundation of their pre-Apocalypse ancestors but the stark and sometimes surprising realities of their world.
Almost all of the societies on the North American continent developed a sophisticated gun culture. Low cost of production of firearms, availability of gunpowder (be it black or smokeless) and the fact that it is easier to learn how to use a gun than a sword all contribute to the egalitarianism and gender equality found within many cultures and may also explain why republics, ethnic enclaves, and city-states are common.
Complicated social hierarchies are inherent in any culture; however in this world the dominance of the warrior castes is a rarer event than in ages past. In fact, warrior castes are quickly losing popularity in many places. The relative ease of defense and prevalence of the citizen-soldier has relegated professional and hereditary warriors to a spot on the lower nobility in most cultures and warrior-kings are almost unheard of outside of barbarian raiding groups.
Instead it is the merchant that dominates. Trade influences all things and the accumulation of wealth can easily buy an army from the various disparate and hamstringed mercenary/bandits that often inhabit the wastes.
When it is not the merchant it is the priest. The world fucking ended and this scarred a few people; by a few people I mean everyone who survived and their grandchildren. Emotional scars from the End of Civilization and the horror of the world after the Fall haunted mankind for generations. Many turned to faith, any faith, to cope in the wilderness.
Religious figures gained prominence everywhere and new communities organized along the thousand paths that the peoples walk. Faiths as disparate as the monolithic Catholic Church and the lesser ethnic and linguistic churches, cobbled together from pre-Fall mysticism, pop culture and half remembered religions, dominate the souls of men and then land under their feet. Theocracies were common and powerful for almost a century all over the Southeast and parts of the Midwest. Though secular authorities gained power in most areas some theocratic states continue to thrive and clergy are a powerful force in many areas.
Say what you want about people but we sure do love getting sexy. And when everything wasn’t anymore some folks needed sweet, sweet interracial consolation. The southeastern states were especially good for this sort of thing. Much like the western US there’s a lot more ethnic diversity than in that great Midwestern blizzard of Germans, Poles and other very cold people.
Growing Latino, Asian and other immigrant populations only add to the stew. Some small fishing towns on the Gulf are a third Vietnamese. Haitians, Cubans and other Caribbean peoples already have large footholds in Florida and parts of coastal Georgia. Korean and Chinese signs litter the countryside in rural Alabama and Kenyans own a lot of gas stations in Shelby County. New Orleans attracts every kind of immigrant. Add this to the primary ethnic groups already in the region, southern whites and southern blacks, and the widespread and multiple examples of extreme ethnogenesis come as no surprise.
Of course this ignores the widespread internal migrations to the southern states. Many Yankees form culturally distinct enclaves within larger cities and suburbs and may have limited contact with the more rural natives. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee all already have substantial Yankee populations in certain regions and this trend will probably continue. This resulted in a culturally distinct white settler group. Most of these Yankees are urban occupants and will form a unique separate ethnic group in many parts of the Southeast.
As it stands there are a variety of groups forming the new ethnic, linguistic and cultural roles of the post apocalyptic world. Keep in mind that terms may overlap and carry different connotations in different regions. Let’s examine the current major groups of the Southeast:
Crackers – The surviving members of the white population with high concentrations in northern Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and north Florida. While they are usually considered “white” most Crackers have some Blacks in their ancestry but to a much lesser extent than the racially mixed Redbones along the Gulf Coast. In the Cracker Corridor through central Tennessee the term has come to mean any English speaking native that is not a Tarheel. Crackers have a distinct accent and practice a variety of faiths, mostly descended from Protestantism with healthy helpings of culture heroes as lesser local deities. Crackers often speak in the formalized English of Mobile amongst their own groups. A variety of accents exist with influences from Miameno (Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican) Spanish, some Caribbean patois and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Many Cracker groups have adopted a uniform lunar calendar with thirteen months of twenty-eight days.
Tarheel – Commonly thought of as a subset of the Cracker ethnic group. The Tarheels migrated west from coastal populations of the Upper South and central Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. Tarheels have endemic population concentrations in western Tennessee, the western portions of the Carolinas and Virginia. The City of Atlanta resettled some mercenary Tarheel tribes in central Georgia, south of the Thousand Peaches, a century and a half ago. It can be difficult to tell Crackers and Tarheels apart. Both have similar roots but with a few important differences. Tarheels have distinctive accents and speak a highly tonal form of English with Chicano (Mexican) Spanish influence. Most Tarheel tribes follow a stylized descendant of Presbyterianism and keep a revived Julian calendar.
Damjanc – Remnants of the urban Yankee populations that have settled alongside the Tarheel. After several centuries of intermarriage the Damjanc are just Tarheel sub-tribes with peculiar cultural practices and a nasal accent. Damjanci are distinguished by their strange vocabulary. Examples include the use of “yous” instead of the formal “yal.” Damjanci are also notorious for their Catholicism and some Tarheel feel threatened by Chicano, Texan, and other foreign priests serving the Damjanci communities in their midst. Some Damjanc tribes include the Yaup (Yoopers), Maksa (from Maxey, the last name of a guy in Michigan with 400 kids), Bransch (Bronx) and the Ussican (Sussex County, Delaware).
Blacks – A small ethnic designation as many Black communities in the Southeast have merged culturally with native white populations and once again in the Cracker Corridor the term is used to describe both mostly white and mostly black natives. Though cultural differences do exist, mostly regarding developed religious and magic ritual. In areas with a surviving separate Black community most multiracial children are raised in the mother’s community and these unions result in small population transfers of men amongst both groups.
Redbones – The largest ethnic group in the Mobile Compact States, the Free Cities of Mimifas-Tonaca and Greater Nawlins and one of the largest groups in the Southeast. Redbones are a result of the vast similarities in culture between the two major ethnic groups in the Deep South. Racial admixture is nothing new to the region and rates of intermarriage are growing. Five hundred years later and both groups have merged almost completely. Redbone may denote a regional identity as well established Cracker and Black families living in largely Redbone regions, like the Black Belt and the Mississippi Delta, have been self-identifying as Redbones for generations.
Chicanos/Miamenos – The native Spanish speaking groups of the Southeast. Both have separate dialects and widely dispersed populations that are individually affected by other groups. Chicanos are descendants of post-Fall Mexican migrants. Many Chicanos are descended from the Mestizos and Indigenas of Mexico and Central America. White Mexicans assimilated into the Cracker group rather easily. The largest Chicano population is east of the Thousand Peaches and is another example of Atlanta importing a buffer state. Land grants, a series of expulsions of the settled Redbones and friendly relations with the Catholic Church remnants led to increased immigration and a slight Chicano majority. The Miameno population is much larger and has several well established population centers. Miamenos are descendants of Spanish speaking Caribbean peoples. Cubans make up the largest heritage group with Dominicans and Puerto Ricans tying for second. Southern Florida has the largest Miameno population where they form almost ninety percent of the population. The Panhandle contains the second largest Miameno group and another large population exists south of contemporary Jacksonville. Almost all Gulf Coast cities have a Miameno section of town, usually called an Asucriton [1] and particularly fertile areas may have caminedors [2] in the hinterland.
Nguoi Den – The “Black People” are an ethnic group concentrated on the banks of the Mississippi River from northeast Louisiana and southwest Mississippi to the eastern part of the Arkansas Delta. As their endonym is in Tieng Viet the surrounding English and Spanish speakers usually call them Wohten or Wudanos and they commonly use the word Den “people” in casual talk amongst themselves. Like the Redbones the Nguoi Den are a multiracial group and are the result of large scale Vietnamese immigration in the 21st and 22nd centuries and racial admixture between the Vietnamese and black and white Americans after the Fall. A hybrid culture emerged with the new hybrid population and a specific English dialect emerged with influences from Vietnamese, AAVE and Southern English. Most Nguoi Den practice a syncretic mix of Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Southern Baptist Conference theology, Church of God and other surviving Protestant branches. Like most post-Fall religions there is a focus on the End of the World and the need to rebuild society. The Den practice extensive rice cultivation and catfish aquaculture. Den attempts to spread into central Mississippi brought them into losing conflict with caminedors and Redbones and moved them into the Nawlins sphere of influence. A decent sized diaspora developed extending into Nawlins and up the Mississippi River with a few trading outposts in Missouri.
Khmer Atunga – The Khmer Atunga are an ethnically, linguistically and culturally Cambodian group that has established itself around Lake Okeechobee and practice a conservative form of Theravada Buddhism. The Atunga have an antagonistic history with their neighbors, Cracker and Miameno alike, but have held onto the Lake Okeechobee region almost since the Fall. As the only Cambodian region in the Southeast the continued independence of the Khmer Atunga is essential for the survival of their culture and people. If they are conquered they will be dispersed and within a few generations be gone.
Africos – Caribbean people of African descent that have settled in the Fort Lauderdale area and speak a regional dialect of English and often know Miameno Spanish for convenience of trade. The Africos maintain a close relationship with their island dwelling cousins and receive large amounts of immigrants from the islands. This influx of migrants ensures Africo population growth and prevents this English speaking minority from being engulfed by the much larger Miamenos.
Other – Varieties of ethnic and linguistic minorities exist outside of these major groups and can be found throughout the Southeast.
[1] From the Miameno Spanish (MES) word for sugar “asucri” mixed with the Mobile Standard Dialect (MSD) word for town “ton” this reflects the significant Miameno involvement in the sugar trade. With extensive contacts in the Caribbean and sugar plantations in the former Everglades the Miamenos have become synonymous with sugar.
[2] These are pretty much Cuban trekboers. The term comes from the MES word “camineda” or a Long Walk; caminedors are Miameno farmers forced out of their traditional homelands by the lack of land and the economic domination of the large plantation-merchant elite. Though they style themselves as valiant pioneers most states consider them squatters and caminedors are always getting into scratch-ups with local militias. They’re a huge problem in central Mississippi and in the last sixty or seventy years migration to the fertile rice plains by poor farmers has resulted in a sudden demographic shift. This shift was made possible by two factors, the sacred place of the cinchona in the Miameno culture and their extensive cultivation of it making malaria a negligible threat and the recent collapse of the rice market and unexpected corn blight resulted in many former inhabitants moving to the larger cities on the Mississippi River.