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I actually quite enjoyed the modern updates since those make one wonder what happened in between. But then I didn't like the maps of the modern-day world.

Awesome AAR, btw :D
 
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I agree with the modern updates, hence I've shifted back to Doyvát and his family. You guys survived a patch of Mr.C is tired of writing about Medieval life.

About the modern updates, having them part of the chapters is a thing I'd change, I think you should have them in seperate chapters or as stories between chapters, it would make your AAR prettier and more consistent to one just reading through it and not following the forum much.

But keeping up with Game of Thrones as reinvigorated me. So you see the return of the period updates (they are probably here to stay for a while).

A Game of Thrones is awesome indeed yes, I love getting angry at the blonds :)

I can whip up a language update, but is there anything I should focus on, Keanon?

If I get to request, the relationship of how the Saxon survives in Prussian is of interest.


The main attraction for me for this AAR was the union/merge/mix of two cultures, the creation of a new realistically feeling kingdom added to Europes otherwise often static feeling and the exodus at start, barring the language of course.

It is the first time I've seen a realistically feeling conlang, for a good alternative history, and the fact it's actually based on the actual languages demands huge respect from me, and this union/mixing exodus has inspired me ever since I first read your AAR. I've been wanting to write something based on this concept, have yet to find a scenario to throw my heart into, but I am looking.

This became a lot more than I planned, but I think I'm trying to say that I anjoy your work and that you're very inspiring. Thanks for all your work. ( I hope I didn't go and sound silly)
 
I actually quite enjoyed the modern updates since those make one wonder what happened in between. But then I didn't like the maps of the modern-day world.

Awesome AAR, btw :D
Thank you, I will keep that in mind. What about the maps? My guess is that the flags get in the way. Luckily, I have the ability to turn them off. ;)

About the modern updates, having them part of the chapters is a thing I'd change, I think you should have them in seperate chapters or as stories between chapters, it would make your AAR prettier and more consistent to one just reading through it and not following the forum much.
I can see that, the thing is I try to make the modern updates unimportant, so I can forget about them and not ruin continuity later.

A Game of Thrones is awesome indeed yes, I love getting angry at the blonds :)
Tyrion Lannaster is awesome... the others can go fall off a horse.

If I get to request, the relationship of how the Saxon survives in Prussian is of interest.
I can whip something up.

The main attraction for me for this AAR was the union/merge/mix of two cultures, the creation of a new realistically feeling kingdom added to Europes otherwise often static feeling and the exodus at start, barring the language of course.

It is the first time I've seen a realistically feeling conlang, for a good alternative history, and the fact it's actually based on the actual languages demands huge respect from me, and this union/mixing exodus has inspired me ever since I first read your AAR. I've been wanting to write something based on this concept, have yet to find a scenario to throw my heart into, but I am looking.

This became a lot more than I planned, but I think I'm trying to say that I anjoy your work and that you're very inspiring. Thanks for all your work. ( I hope I didn't go and sound silly)
I'm glad that Anglo-Prussian has left such an impression and I thank you for such kind words.
 
Prussian Lesson #11
Influences and Changes


Unbeknownst to King Eadbert at the time, his Dictionary of the Prussian Language became the basis of Early Prussian. Early Prussian is notable for its heavy Saxon influence on vocabulary as well maintaining its base system of case. What happened on a linguistic level was that the Saxon language, being the language of law and the nobility, had an uneven influence over the native Baltic languages. Early Prussian, essentially, was an Anglo-Frisian language that was just barely unintelligible with Old English. A few Baltic and Polish words slipped through the cracks and became commonplace. It was not long, however, that the language swung the other direction. During the period of Middle Prussian (from about 1200 to 1400), a flood of Baltic and Polish words flooded back into the language. It was this period that saw several major developments in the language that would be found more familiar to modern speakers:
  1. The great vowel shift. The letter "á" shifted from |əɪ̯| (as in the English "light") to the more familiar open vowels |a|, |ä| and |ɑ|. Meanwhile "a", which held |a|, shifted to the diphthong |eɪ̯| (as in the English "lane"). This is why the letter "a" with no accent is much more uncommon than the letter "á" with the accent when one would expect the opposite. During the alphabet reforms, it was decided that they would keep the accents where they were to simplify an already complicated transition. The letter "o" assumed the diphthong |oʊ̯| (Eng: "low") in any position, making it the second letter to carry solely a diphthong. The sound |ʌ| (Eng: "cut") shifted to the middle, assuming the familiar |ə| (German: "bitte").
  2. The death of the neuter and feminine genders. Some would say that Prussian has a neuter gender and remnants of a feminine gender, however writing from the XV Century show that the neuter was merged into the masculine gender, while the feminine was reduced to only specifically declared people and objects. Eventually, objects could not hold gender at all: leaving the feminine gendering to only people and animals that have already been specifically deemed "female".
  3. The second-person singular pronoun "Ju" shifts from singular to plural, while the corrupted "Tu" takes over the second-person singular position.
  4. The "death" of the letter "v", which is merged into the letter "w".
  5. The end of double consonants that are not on separate syllables.
  6. Declined use in the genitive case. Despite its continued existence, it is commonly used only with the word "ŝew", which means "of the"

By the XVII Century, Prussian has picked up one of its most interesting features: the myriad of locatives which describe the position of anything in space and time, usually with some sort of reference. Many of these came from the Baltic and Polish languages, and until this period were used almost interchangeably. However, in time, words with Polish roots shifted to being about time while those with Baltic and Saxon roots became more spatial.

With the death of case and gender, the strongest Saxon influences seemed to die out. However, the strongest influence it had was on word order. The Baltic languages were heavily reliant on case to make sense of sentences, while Old English was reliant more on word order. Like many other Germanic languages, especially West Germanic languages such as German and Dutch: Prussian is a V2 language, particularly a SVO language. This means that for all intensive purposes the order of words in a sentence should follow the patter Subject Verb Object. However, this is open to some reorganization based on several modifiers:
  1. When asking a yes/no question the word order is VSO. This singles to the the one being asked that a simple yes or no will suffice. Maintaining the SVO order and amending ", yes?" or ", no?" to the end of the sentence usually implies the asker wants to be corrected if they are wrong.
  2. Like other Germanic languages, Prussian relies heavily on modal verbs. When using a modal, word order becomes SMOV. The verb is left unconjugated.
  3. In the case of adding time or other descriptors, it is possible to switch the subject to the third position (but still before the object), becoming TVSO.
  4. Following a conjunction, base word order can be maintained, or the verb is switched to the end. Either is correct and in both cases the verb should be properly conjugated.

Modern Prussian arose out of the XVI Century and by the XVIII Century would be familiar to most speakers today. The biggest changes to the language in the XX Century came from the influx of foreign words giving the rise of globalism, as well as the two alphabet reforms. The first reform, in 1915, shifted Prussian away from the Greek based "Church Prussian" and more toward a hybrid of custom figures and Latin figures. Meanwhile, "Freehand" Prussian became the popular hand written system. With the fall of Communism in 1992, the alphabet was changed again in 1995. Now the alphabet was entirely based on the Latin alphabet with a few additions (á, æ, ó, ŝ, and ţ) and deletions (q, v and y).
 
Wow. Yet another 'ancient' language with cases (Saxon). Latin was not enough :p
I like these language updates, as long as you don't take them 'too far'. The changes in a society are always reflected in its language and it helps me make more sense of Prussia's history :D
 
Wow. Yet another 'ancient' language with cases (Saxon). Latin was not enough :p
I like these language updates, as long as you don't take them 'too far'. The changes in a society are always reflected in its language and it helps me make more sense of Prussia's history :D
Most languages have case, even English though all the endings have slowly atrophied away. Speaking English as your first language, I believe, makes picking up case ridiculously hard (especially after the magical age of 12).

And all the Baltic and East/West Slavic languages are gone? Czech?
Not entirely. Czech survives in a small corner of what used to be Bohemia. They still have Prague, luckily. Sorbian and Wendish also survived in tiny pockets. The East Slavic languages also took a thrashing. Russian is all but dead, spoken in a few regions of Mordvia (Tver) and Prussia (Moscow). Though in neither place is it majority language. In Mordvia they'd have minority status but there is too few of them to justify it. The only nation that speaks an Eastern or Western Slavic language natively is Azowia. The South Slavic languages fared a bit better. Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Bosnian (it is like Montenegrin + some Arabization) and Bulgarian are all alive and well, despite Bulgarian being horribly shrunken.
 
I just finished Homelands, and I'm currently reading the culture updates here before I get into the meat of Bastions. (I skipped the history book, as Homelands is still pretty fresh).

I want to say that I'm incredibly impressed with your work on this. Other than some typos, this is a series that merits a Kindle or other E-book version. It's a delight to read.

As a side note, I named one of my characters in Rift after Kiten's first wife, Rasa. You can find her on the Defiant side on the Asphodel shard! :D
 
I'm just strolling through and wanted to say that, as a fellow conlanger, I'm very interested in your Prussian language after I've read your last update. Keep it up, I'd try to read rest of lang updates! One problem though: I'm unable to see some of the IPA characters, could you please tell me how to enable them for Chrome?
 
I just finished Homelands, and I'm currently reading the culture updates here before I get into the meat of Bastions. (I skipped the history book, as Homelands is still pretty fresh).

I want to say that I'm incredibly impressed with your work on this. Other than some typos, this is a series that merits a Kindle or other E-book version. It's a delight to read.

As a side note, I named one of my characters in Rift after Kiten's first wife, Rasa. You can find her on the Defiant side on the Asphodel shard! :D
Thank you very much, and welcome!

The sad thing is that I am actually a bit of a grammar Nazi in real life. I have to be in a particular "mood" to write, usually very energetic or slightly drunk, which causes my skills to plummet. It didn't help that the grammar check on my computer was off until recently. I do read through a cringe at all of them.

I will definitely look into finding Rasa.

I'm just strolling through and wanted to say that, as a fellow conlanger, I'm very interested in your Prussian language after I've read your last update. Keep it up, I'd try to read rest of lang updates! One problem though: I'm unable to see some of the IPA characters, could you please tell me how to enable them for Chrome?
Also welcome! I'm sorry you cannot see the IPA characters. I've never had a problem with it. I wonder if it is not a language pack issue, what OS are you using? Honestly, as much of a tech person I am, this is an issue probably better suited for Google.


For everyone else, there is an update well underway. There is also an update for A Chose Few, but I haven't played M&B recently.
 
Bastions
Chapter Forty Three: Woes of an Empire
Part 1


Prelude:
Going along his father's wishes, Doyvát the Elder made Doyvát the Younger Lord-Protector of Poland. But the King did not think it was a good move. He felt that with the likes of Tessin, Cottbus and Azowia moving away from Prussian rule, it was only a matter of time before Poland did too. However, there was no movement to separate Poland. The Polish lands were the Prussian lands. There was no reason for anyone to feel this way. They spoke the same language and went to the same church. What more could unite them; many thought. But therein lay the problem. There was one thing missing: a King. Doyvát knew this. He held the titles of Prussia and Poland... but there was no Poland, only Prussia. One Kingdom, one King. All the while an unsettling realization was dawning on the King. Prussia was now the Sheppard and had a flock to protect. Before the Civil War, defending Prussia meant defending Christianity. But since Prussia broke apart, they could either defend themselves and leave the others to rot; or attempt to spread their forces thin and protect all Christians everywhere. And that begged even more questions: what about the Edessans? What about the Norse? What about the Revisionists? Did they deserve Prussia's protection too? Or were they lost causes? To be left behind as the world moved forward without them? Was he truly the person to judge the forlorn from those who could be rescued?

ChristianWorldcopy.png

Map of the Christian World in 1367. Leon, at the time, was part of the Caliphate and mostly made up of Muslims. However, a nominally Christian leadership was allowed to remain.

November 21st, 1367

The shipyards of Memelgrád were in full swing. King Doyvát toured the docks and piers of his capital watching the construction of his lasting impression on Prussia: the massive fleet that would hold the Baltic open. Even if Denmark were to fall, even if Prussia was on its own, the fleet would be a wedge to drive open the Baltic. Or that was the King's hope. Regardless, it was something for the people to put their faith in. They saw little of the army, and though the numbers were high the laymen rarely had time to contemplate such things. But on trip to the harbor of Memelgrád and the message would be clear to any man: it was Prussia's duty to dominate the world. Beside the King stood Zydrunas Kasimirassun, the newly appointed Grand Duke of the Navy. He wore a coat lined in the furs of wolves and carried himself as a man tasked with the near impossible. He was an imposing figure, even next to the great warrior Doyvát.

As they toured, Zydrunas explained what was going on to the King, what each ship was for, and how it would be used as a piece of the whole. Even as the snow began to fall, the men kept working, now taking time to pull cloth tents over the ships to keep them from filling with snow during the day. The whole city was filled with the sound of progress, the constant banging of hammers and the pumping of bellows as the entire capital worked on completing Doyvát's vision. As Doyvát walked past the peasants and merchants they stopped and bowed. He would give a small salute back. He was their hero from the civil war, the Knight that never surrendered and now was their time to repay him. The economic boom under his father powered the fires of change. Europe as a whole was changing as the religious wars of the past settled down. Never again would the entire continent be entirely engulfed in one war.

Returning to the palace, Doyvát found his son waiting for him just within the gates. "What are you doing here? Don't you have Greek lessons at this time?"

"Máte has sent us all out of the palace... except for the maids and cooks. She wants to throw a party in celebration of the new fleet you are building. I'm here to warn you."

"Warn me?" the King asked, an eyebrow slowly lifting as his son continued.

"Yeah... she's um... fighting with bábe."

"Over what?" the King asked.

"I don't really know, but bábe seemed really sad after máte told her to move to the palace in Mariengrád." Doyvát raised a hand to his face and shook his head, but the younger continued, "I don't really understand why she'd be so sad. I mean I get that she likes living with us, but what is so bad about Mariengrád?"

"Doyvát," started the King, "When you are angry and tell someone to 'move to the palace of Mariengrád', you are telling them to go die somewhere far away."

"How so?"

"It used to be a custom for Prussian Kings to move to the palace in Mariengrád when they were old and ill so that when they died they could more easily be moved to the crypts under the city."

"Well why didn't tátuŝ move to Mariengrád?"

"We don't follow that tradition any more. It can start a panic, and if the King were to survive his illness it would confuse the people." Doyvát thought briefly and then sort of came back down to the current scene, "Why am I having these conversations with you? You're like thirteen... go chase the maids and make yourself useless..."

The younger Doyvát save his father a half-hearted salute, turned to leave, but remained there. Eventually he turned around and with a smug look said, "But if I go make myself useless, wouldn't that be obeying you... which would make me a good son..."

"Stop, right there, smart ass. Just go. I am going to settle down máte and bábe." The King headed off, leaving his son to do as he pleased. Zydrunas remained standing there as well; the grizzled veteran looked down at the boy, who remained rooted to the ground watching him in return.

"Did you kill those wolves yourself?" Doyvát the younger asked.

"No, why would you think such a thing?"

"I've heard that you are from the Finnish territories. Merchants around here tell that the Finns are a ruthless bunch of people who hunt with packs of bears instead of dogs and wear wolves as a lady of Paris might a stoat."

"Ah. You are thinking of the Pagan Finns. No, we Prussian Finns are much like your Livonians: speak the same dialect, live near the sea, learn to sail from a young age, and live mostly off salted fish."

"That sounds rather dull."

"Then it would be no surprise to you that I am here in the capital," the Grand Duke said.

"Do you like the capital then?"

"I find the capital has its advantages, better food, better homes, better wine, better wome..." The boy remained ready for an answer, but Zydrunas relented, "I'll tell you more about that last one when you come of age."

"My father has great expectations for the Navy; he has put much of his faith in you."

"He has? Well then, I shall have to stick to my duties. I apologize if I am intruding, but why is it that you are alone?"

"My father says I don't need guards on palace grounds... that's why we paid for a wall."

"No," the admiral began. "Why is it you have no siblings? Many of the great houses of Prussia are filled with the pitter-patter of many feet. But here it is just you."

"My father never speaks of such things, though if I were to wager a bet it would be that he remembers too clearly the Civil War. Succession is much easier when there is only one child to succeed you."

"Hmm, never thought of it like that. You are wise for a small lad."
 
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Btw, even before Swedes conquered with Christianity Finland during the 12th century, our coastlianes in Nyland and in Österbotten were full of Swedes. In this timeline, were they Prussianized or what else happened to them?
And seeing the Eu3 map, is it that Finland controls Karelia? Or Karelia/Novgorod/something?
And how did Sweden end up having Lappland? No sami Tribes nor Kven state?
 
Smart lad, that one. Loved the talk between Dovyát and his son.
Splendid update
I enjoyed writing it, I am glad it shows.

Awesome insight into the characters, as well as giving us a look into King Doyvát's thoughts as to the future of Prussia.
Thank you!

Btw, even before Swedes conquered with Christianity Finland during the 12th century, our coastlianes in Nyland and in Österbotten were full of Swedes. In this timeline, were they Prussianized or what else happened to them?
And seeing the Eu3 map, is it that Finland controls Karelia? Or Karelia/Novgorod/something?
And how did Sweden end up having Lappland? No sami Tribes nor Kven state?
I'll keep that in mind, but I sort of had to default my knowledge to the map set-up at the beginning of CK.
Uusikaupunki, or New Mordvia controls Karelia. It is the largest and wealthiest of the four Mordvin states which lie east of Prussia and north of Azowia.
Sweden conquered Lappland towards the end of Homelands. Basically they had to or be conquered entirely by the Caliphate. That is not to say the Sami enjoy being conquered.
 
I'd like some updates, about either like Iceland (lolwut Vinland?) or the Sveads/Norse. Or maybe England! Or the Frandist Caliphate. OR MAYBE Edessans, if they did anything important.

... basically I want foreign stuff. The Wider World, as it were. I'd prefer the Scandinavian stuff (especially Icelandic Vinland lolwut), but any of it would be good.

That isn't to say the Prussian stuff is not good, it's great. BUT still, when I play EU3 I end up looking over the rest of the world to see what's happening as much as I focus on my state.
 
I'd like some updates, about either like Iceland (lolwut Vinland?) or the Sveads/Norse. Or maybe England! Or the Frandist Caliphate. OR MAYBE Edessans, if they did anything important.

... basically I want foreign stuff. The Wider World, as it were. I'd prefer the Scandinavian stuff (especially Icelandic Vinland lolwut), but any of it would be good.

That isn't to say the Prussian stuff is not good, it's great. BUT still, when I play EU3 I end up looking over the rest of the world to see what's happening as much as I focus on my state.
I might have a few things to say about the Icelandic adventures...
 
I've probably been waiting for too long to do this but here it goes...

First of I just want to say I love this AAR. It's depth, diversity and creativity is extremely refreshing and almost unmatched on the forums(and I've read quite alot). I've read the whole thing and it's impressive that you can keep this going and still keep the same standard.
btw I read that you wanted to stop the modern updates, but I just want to say I really enjoyed them.