Carter McBride
11-26-2011, 04:55 PM
The maps below accompany a short chronological work on the occurrances in the area of modern Magrathea prior to the formation of the modern state. The top one is the old settlements on the islands according to language, and the bottom one is an official map of the modern Federation. Short stories will be released in the near future! It will also serve as a factbook, but as factbooks are a bit boring, I thought I'd do somethjing different. Enjoy, I guess. :smokin: Post if you want, I really don't care.
MAPS
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8935/oldmagrathea.png
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3391/alwaysjamming.png
Welcome to the Official Non-Wiki World Factbook of The Federal Republic of Magrathea! This page will thoroughly cover the history and economy, foreign relations policies, military (kind of), and government of Federal Republic of Magrathea.
*Applause*
A Brief History of the Land and Sea on which Magrathea Sits
1948 CE - 1960 CE “Settlement and Organization”
-In the year 1948 CE, thousands, or hundreds of thousands (Magrathean historians cannot tell the size of the landing party) of hobos, lost souls, people of little importance in the world at the time, communists, Democrats, losers, Republicans, fascists, fantasists, carnies, and university professors amassed a movement of exploration came together at the bay southeast of the stronghold of Coredgewell Greene, and hijacked more than 234 fishing and clamming vessels to set sail for new land and life. The motley and almost repulsive crew landed on an uninhabited island they came to know as “Magrethia” in English (the old spelling), or more colloquially and affectionately, "Maggie," on 15 November 1948. They then realized from further expedition in 1949 and 1950 that they were indeed surrounded by uninhabited islands of sufficient size for habitation, and jumped on the opportunity to claim land, allowing the English speakers to disperse throughout and lay claim to the island of Magrethia. These people came from six distinct nationalities and spoke at least seven separate languages. As one can imagine, communication across the language barrier between groups was incredibly difficult to overcome and was initially restricted to the universal languages of hand signals and very bad dancing. And incorrect mathematics. And music. But mostly very bad dancing.
For the months and years of the so-called First Dozen (the dozen years between '48 and '60), as this seemingly random and unassuming unorganized rabble of settlers began to... well, settle into their new-found lives and daily routines on the Nine Islands, the people who spoke the same languages naturally formed what are historically called "cliques" by Magratheans, but should be called factions. This wasn't high school.
Anyway, by June 1954, seven distinct groups of people had begun to form cohesive settlements on their respective islands and created rudimentary states. The French were in the far west, bordered by the Russian speakers on the modern islands of Maximelagon and Betelgeuse 5, and the Gaelic speakers on Betelgeuse 7 and New Betel in the East. The eastern border of the Russians was entirely English, and the Gaelic speakers were bordered by the Arab fishermen to the Southeast and the Russians in the North. The Arabs shared what is now Damogran with the Damn German Fascists, and to the South, on what is now Bethselamin, there were the Asian Marxists who spoke Korean. Now by 1956, all had written some laws, and had one or more leaders, and the Gaels, French, and Arabs (that Magrathean historians know of) had written what could be called "constitutions" or "bills of rights." Maps of the Nine Islands at various stages are available above.
These early states lived in relative peace, only quarreling when it came to the borders of fishing areas, with the occasional Russian vessel wandering into the English zone following schools of various marine animals and getting yelled at or having small physical confrontations, often by using large rubber slingshots to fling fish and other living projectiles at one another at high speeds. There were approximately 82 deaths resulting from fish-to-skull trauma between 1950 and 1960.
-Culture and Lifestyle: Fish-launching, or Pisco-marksmanship, is now one of the most popular sports in the Federation, and is played by attempting to accurately hit a pumpkin-headed mannequin on a distant boat with floating rubber fish. If the pumpkin is hit and is found to be not broken, exploded, or cracked, the three-man team gains a point. The more points a team gets, the more times they get whacked with a fish in the head (administered by the mayor of the nearest borough) when they return on land.
1961 - 1970 “When It All Gets Weird”
-This time was a time of relative peace and growth for people living on the islands. On 21 December 1961, the seven states, now well-established and relatively developed considering their existence time, created an organization called the Interstate Organization (IO) which met in Georgesby, Magrathea (now called Brigidstown), the city of greatest size at the time in the islands. As in today's various leagues and alliances, each state could vote on bills and other subjects, and could impose punishment or sanctions on a state if it misbehaved (interestingly enough, the French were the worst behaved: they stole over 12,000 kg of Russian and Gaelic fish over this period, and actually raided the shores of the Russian islands for their vodka, and to destroy their supply of borscht). Sports leagues were developed for soccer football, the IFC, chess, the ICC, and pisco-marksmanship, the IPML. Each regrouped after the war and all are still followed closely by many today. By 1965 many states were concentrating heavily on establishing themselves as the regional power, leading to numerous sporadic unarmed and often purely verbal conflicts among nations, as the only physical weapons on-island were primitive sticks and stones and deadly native hornets (as well as the fish-projectiles). There were, in fact, rifles brought by the Germans from their home, but they hadn't taken into account the fact that that the salt water when coming ashore in 1950 would render the bolt action useless, no matter how reliable the weapon was, as several of the vessels carrying the weapons struck reefs and rocks off what is now the western shores of Damogran, and sunk.
In 1967, for a rather strange example of these verbal conflicts, the Arab Jamahuriyyat was building vessels both for observation purposes and for food- and resource-collection. When Arab vessels began to fish in would-be German State waters (had the Germans thought to go fishing instead of wiping out the population of Damogran Wild Hogs for food), thousands of German people lined up on the border of the two states and shouted racial and religious slurs at the Arab people, but did not cross the border. The Arabs merely stood atop their houses and watched, unfazed. Most of them couldn’t understand German. This style of nonviolent protest in place of armed warfare was the primary way of engaging in conflict until 1969, when boatloads of firearms numbering approximately 1,500 Fabrique Nationale FALs purchased illegally by a "rogue" Christian activism group called “The Christian Member Society” (formed by radical Christian pastor Wheaty Quigley, formerly of the Tyson County Church in the United States) arrived on the desolate northern shores of the State of the English, without any knowledge of the English government at the time, and for that matter, nobody knew about it, as nobody lives on the north shore of Magrathea. This supply of arms and ammunition would eventually lead to an islands-wide conflict that would destroy infrastructure and take many lives. That’s a story for the next episode of this history!
-Fun Fact: In 1964, Thibault-Léonard Bernard, one of the first Prefect of the Interstate Organization, commissioned two well-known linguists from the Interinsular Academy at Georgesby/Brigidstown to create a simple, learnable, natural-feeling common language for official use throughout the states. It didn’t work. Nothing is known about the language today. Some say it turned into Klingon. Some don’t. Who knows?
1971 - 2001 "The War on Antidiversitians”
PART 1
-It has been discovered by Magrathean investigations that the before-said organization called the Christian Member Society (CMS), led by Pastor W. Quigley, built a church, village, and Operations Post near the cliff-coast on the northern shores of Magrathea, an area with dense vegetation cover and in the thick of a relatively large jungle on the edge of farmland. The location of the base was only found after the Vis Pacem Council*** decided to deploy their best trackers and militiamen to eliminate the last of CMS high command (Pastor Quigley and his inner circle, including Bradley Mayes and Theo Madeira) in June 2001 after the compound was found and actually shot at by Gaelic pilots in CombatUltralight aircraft. After CMS built this highly secretive group of fortifications, and amassed enough firepower, ammunition (from suppliers who still today are unknown), and manpower thought to have numbered over 2,000, on 8 October 1972 the group launched two simultaneous and coordinated assaults on the non-Christian islands: One was a land-based assault on the English Republic to the South on Magrathea for the purpose of establishing a foothold on the most strategic of the islands, and the other was an amphibious landing (unopposed, obviously) to take over and Christianize the Arab fishermen on the west end of Damogran, while simultaneously occupying the largest island in the archipelago. Over 10,000 were killed. They, while in control of the English, German fascists, and Arabs, continued to plot attacks on other nations, namely the nonreligious communists in the Russian State and the Asian Marxists to the south. During its attacks, CMS insurgents wore uniforms depicting the flags of Christian nations and carried out their attacks swiftly and inflicted massive civilian casualties because of the fact that the people of the victim nations had no way to repel armed assaults and had no effective weapons. Though the insurgents were not heavily armed, the leverage of having use of those functional rifles while nobody else did gave them a great advantage.
This is not to say, however, that there was not any resistance to the pillaging and chaos wrought by the insurgents. In a commune called Ryansra (or an-Rian Sruth in Irish Gaelic, as it was a Gaelic colony on English-speaking Magrathea), a 23-year-old farmer named Uilleam Dairmadh MacBrighde was startled by unexpected gunshots outside his rural home in the middle of Magrathea. He then proceeded to exit his home and subsequently witnessed an insurgent standing at the intersection of two dirt roads with his weapon, yelling in English at one of the other insurgents. He then, while in hiding, witnessed his neighbors and their two young children being murdered, execution-style, by a three insurgents. While those insurgents’ backs were turned, MacBrighde used a hoe to surprise and strangle from behind that insurgent at the crossroads, incapacitating him, and managed to drag the man behind a low stone wall. Utilizing his newly obtained rifle, he took the insurgent’s ammunition, figured out the bolt action (as he’d never actually worked one before) and took up a position behind a stone wall covered by a dense hedge. From here, he opened fire on the insurgents, initially hitting one in the chest and another on his way to cover once the initially hit man was observed. The third one made it behind MacBrighde’s neighbors’ house, and held his position, however did not maintain situational awareness by finding his opponent’s position. Taking advantage of this, MacBrighde made his way quietly out to where the dead insugents lay, and retrieved their rifles and ammunition. Again quietly, he then made his way down the road in the opposite direction to the town of Ryansra proper, where in the tavern he found several able-bodied men whom he recruited to resist the invasion (that the taverngoers were yet not aware of… At that, nor did anyone understand the scale of the conflict about to occur) and gave to them the four rifles and ammunition from the dispatched insurgents so they could join Mr. MacBrighde.
More to come in the future!
MAPS
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8935/oldmagrathea.png
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3391/alwaysjamming.png
Welcome to the Official Non-Wiki World Factbook of The Federal Republic of Magrathea! This page will thoroughly cover the history and economy, foreign relations policies, military (kind of), and government of Federal Republic of Magrathea.
*Applause*
A Brief History of the Land and Sea on which Magrathea Sits
1948 CE - 1960 CE “Settlement and Organization”
-In the year 1948 CE, thousands, or hundreds of thousands (Magrathean historians cannot tell the size of the landing party) of hobos, lost souls, people of little importance in the world at the time, communists, Democrats, losers, Republicans, fascists, fantasists, carnies, and university professors amassed a movement of exploration came together at the bay southeast of the stronghold of Coredgewell Greene, and hijacked more than 234 fishing and clamming vessels to set sail for new land and life. The motley and almost repulsive crew landed on an uninhabited island they came to know as “Magrethia” in English (the old spelling), or more colloquially and affectionately, "Maggie," on 15 November 1948. They then realized from further expedition in 1949 and 1950 that they were indeed surrounded by uninhabited islands of sufficient size for habitation, and jumped on the opportunity to claim land, allowing the English speakers to disperse throughout and lay claim to the island of Magrethia. These people came from six distinct nationalities and spoke at least seven separate languages. As one can imagine, communication across the language barrier between groups was incredibly difficult to overcome and was initially restricted to the universal languages of hand signals and very bad dancing. And incorrect mathematics. And music. But mostly very bad dancing.
For the months and years of the so-called First Dozen (the dozen years between '48 and '60), as this seemingly random and unassuming unorganized rabble of settlers began to... well, settle into their new-found lives and daily routines on the Nine Islands, the people who spoke the same languages naturally formed what are historically called "cliques" by Magratheans, but should be called factions. This wasn't high school.
Anyway, by June 1954, seven distinct groups of people had begun to form cohesive settlements on their respective islands and created rudimentary states. The French were in the far west, bordered by the Russian speakers on the modern islands of Maximelagon and Betelgeuse 5, and the Gaelic speakers on Betelgeuse 7 and New Betel in the East. The eastern border of the Russians was entirely English, and the Gaelic speakers were bordered by the Arab fishermen to the Southeast and the Russians in the North. The Arabs shared what is now Damogran with the Damn German Fascists, and to the South, on what is now Bethselamin, there were the Asian Marxists who spoke Korean. Now by 1956, all had written some laws, and had one or more leaders, and the Gaels, French, and Arabs (that Magrathean historians know of) had written what could be called "constitutions" or "bills of rights." Maps of the Nine Islands at various stages are available above.
These early states lived in relative peace, only quarreling when it came to the borders of fishing areas, with the occasional Russian vessel wandering into the English zone following schools of various marine animals and getting yelled at or having small physical confrontations, often by using large rubber slingshots to fling fish and other living projectiles at one another at high speeds. There were approximately 82 deaths resulting from fish-to-skull trauma between 1950 and 1960.
-Culture and Lifestyle: Fish-launching, or Pisco-marksmanship, is now one of the most popular sports in the Federation, and is played by attempting to accurately hit a pumpkin-headed mannequin on a distant boat with floating rubber fish. If the pumpkin is hit and is found to be not broken, exploded, or cracked, the three-man team gains a point. The more points a team gets, the more times they get whacked with a fish in the head (administered by the mayor of the nearest borough) when they return on land.
1961 - 1970 “When It All Gets Weird”
-This time was a time of relative peace and growth for people living on the islands. On 21 December 1961, the seven states, now well-established and relatively developed considering their existence time, created an organization called the Interstate Organization (IO) which met in Georgesby, Magrathea (now called Brigidstown), the city of greatest size at the time in the islands. As in today's various leagues and alliances, each state could vote on bills and other subjects, and could impose punishment or sanctions on a state if it misbehaved (interestingly enough, the French were the worst behaved: they stole over 12,000 kg of Russian and Gaelic fish over this period, and actually raided the shores of the Russian islands for their vodka, and to destroy their supply of borscht). Sports leagues were developed for soccer football, the IFC, chess, the ICC, and pisco-marksmanship, the IPML. Each regrouped after the war and all are still followed closely by many today. By 1965 many states were concentrating heavily on establishing themselves as the regional power, leading to numerous sporadic unarmed and often purely verbal conflicts among nations, as the only physical weapons on-island were primitive sticks and stones and deadly native hornets (as well as the fish-projectiles). There were, in fact, rifles brought by the Germans from their home, but they hadn't taken into account the fact that that the salt water when coming ashore in 1950 would render the bolt action useless, no matter how reliable the weapon was, as several of the vessels carrying the weapons struck reefs and rocks off what is now the western shores of Damogran, and sunk.
In 1967, for a rather strange example of these verbal conflicts, the Arab Jamahuriyyat was building vessels both for observation purposes and for food- and resource-collection. When Arab vessels began to fish in would-be German State waters (had the Germans thought to go fishing instead of wiping out the population of Damogran Wild Hogs for food), thousands of German people lined up on the border of the two states and shouted racial and religious slurs at the Arab people, but did not cross the border. The Arabs merely stood atop their houses and watched, unfazed. Most of them couldn’t understand German. This style of nonviolent protest in place of armed warfare was the primary way of engaging in conflict until 1969, when boatloads of firearms numbering approximately 1,500 Fabrique Nationale FALs purchased illegally by a "rogue" Christian activism group called “The Christian Member Society” (formed by radical Christian pastor Wheaty Quigley, formerly of the Tyson County Church in the United States) arrived on the desolate northern shores of the State of the English, without any knowledge of the English government at the time, and for that matter, nobody knew about it, as nobody lives on the north shore of Magrathea. This supply of arms and ammunition would eventually lead to an islands-wide conflict that would destroy infrastructure and take many lives. That’s a story for the next episode of this history!
-Fun Fact: In 1964, Thibault-Léonard Bernard, one of the first Prefect of the Interstate Organization, commissioned two well-known linguists from the Interinsular Academy at Georgesby/Brigidstown to create a simple, learnable, natural-feeling common language for official use throughout the states. It didn’t work. Nothing is known about the language today. Some say it turned into Klingon. Some don’t. Who knows?
1971 - 2001 "The War on Antidiversitians”
PART 1
-It has been discovered by Magrathean investigations that the before-said organization called the Christian Member Society (CMS), led by Pastor W. Quigley, built a church, village, and Operations Post near the cliff-coast on the northern shores of Magrathea, an area with dense vegetation cover and in the thick of a relatively large jungle on the edge of farmland. The location of the base was only found after the Vis Pacem Council*** decided to deploy their best trackers and militiamen to eliminate the last of CMS high command (Pastor Quigley and his inner circle, including Bradley Mayes and Theo Madeira) in June 2001 after the compound was found and actually shot at by Gaelic pilots in CombatUltralight aircraft. After CMS built this highly secretive group of fortifications, and amassed enough firepower, ammunition (from suppliers who still today are unknown), and manpower thought to have numbered over 2,000, on 8 October 1972 the group launched two simultaneous and coordinated assaults on the non-Christian islands: One was a land-based assault on the English Republic to the South on Magrathea for the purpose of establishing a foothold on the most strategic of the islands, and the other was an amphibious landing (unopposed, obviously) to take over and Christianize the Arab fishermen on the west end of Damogran, while simultaneously occupying the largest island in the archipelago. Over 10,000 were killed. They, while in control of the English, German fascists, and Arabs, continued to plot attacks on other nations, namely the nonreligious communists in the Russian State and the Asian Marxists to the south. During its attacks, CMS insurgents wore uniforms depicting the flags of Christian nations and carried out their attacks swiftly and inflicted massive civilian casualties because of the fact that the people of the victim nations had no way to repel armed assaults and had no effective weapons. Though the insurgents were not heavily armed, the leverage of having use of those functional rifles while nobody else did gave them a great advantage.
This is not to say, however, that there was not any resistance to the pillaging and chaos wrought by the insurgents. In a commune called Ryansra (or an-Rian Sruth in Irish Gaelic, as it was a Gaelic colony on English-speaking Magrathea), a 23-year-old farmer named Uilleam Dairmadh MacBrighde was startled by unexpected gunshots outside his rural home in the middle of Magrathea. He then proceeded to exit his home and subsequently witnessed an insurgent standing at the intersection of two dirt roads with his weapon, yelling in English at one of the other insurgents. He then, while in hiding, witnessed his neighbors and their two young children being murdered, execution-style, by a three insurgents. While those insurgents’ backs were turned, MacBrighde used a hoe to surprise and strangle from behind that insurgent at the crossroads, incapacitating him, and managed to drag the man behind a low stone wall. Utilizing his newly obtained rifle, he took the insurgent’s ammunition, figured out the bolt action (as he’d never actually worked one before) and took up a position behind a stone wall covered by a dense hedge. From here, he opened fire on the insurgents, initially hitting one in the chest and another on his way to cover once the initially hit man was observed. The third one made it behind MacBrighde’s neighbors’ house, and held his position, however did not maintain situational awareness by finding his opponent’s position. Taking advantage of this, MacBrighde made his way quietly out to where the dead insugents lay, and retrieved their rifles and ammunition. Again quietly, he then made his way down the road in the opposite direction to the town of Ryansra proper, where in the tavern he found several able-bodied men whom he recruited to resist the invasion (that the taverngoers were yet not aware of… At that, nor did anyone understand the scale of the conflict about to occur) and gave to them the four rifles and ammunition from the dispatched insurgents so they could join Mr. MacBrighde.
More to come in the future!