1445-1504: Southern Migration and Flower-Induced Warmongering
The Chinook start out by vassalizing the Salish, and taking all of their gold — with a greedy ruler, giving them a sense of achievement.
They get acquainted once again with these lovelies, conquering and vassalizing. After vassalizing ally-less Wichita, they release the Salish from vassalization, as they stayed far away to cuddle with their soon-to-be-rivals, the Haida. The Chinook council has rather short attention spans and can only handle so many "diplomatic relations" at once.
30 years in, the Chinook now find a place to permanently call their home. They start convincing vassals to fully assimilate into their great tribe. Cookies may or may have not been involved.
The Chinook liberate their only neighbors, the Colima.
With no one willing the share maps, the Chinook declare war to get some nice exploring in.
Due to outstanding military strategy, the Chinook end up only taking 3.16x as many casualties as the Tarascan...
...but only 2k more casualties then the whole enemies combined. The Chinook win the war, but their economy is running a deficit, their manpower depleted, and rebels threaten to rise up. They refuse to convert to the religion of their new land, Nahuatl, not wanting to further shorten their attention span.
After stabilizing a bit, the Chinook declare on the Haida for some money and war reparations.
They ally with Itza and Kiche, two tribes to the east. They get along so famously that they vow to crush any tribes that separate their borders. The Chinook share a
potlatch with their new allies, each trying to one-up the other on the lavishness of their gifts. Being poor, naturally the Chinook lose against their allies' awesome new maps of the area.
While the Chinook armies are still returning with their Haidan plunder, the treacherous Tlapanec declare war on the Chinook, seeking to subjugate them with flower power.
There must be something good in those flowers, because the numbers aren't looking good for the aggressors. Chinook had lowered their army maintenance a bit, but did the Tlapanec not expect the Chinook's faithful allies to join in? The Itza and Kiche are now great friends with the Chinook.
The Tlapanec invaders, along with their vassal, Tarascan, quickly overrun the two Chinook mothballed forts. But once Chinook barters for military access with the neutral Zapotec and Mixtec, the Itza and Kiche finally decide to finish their beers and march over to help their new friends.
The Tlapanec defeat the Itza and Kiche armies separately, forcing them to go back home and get more beer.
The eastern armies come back, stronger, more powerful, and most of all, more united — than ever before... routing the Tlapanec at the great battle of Cholula.
Meanwhile, Tlapanec diplomats were sharing their hallucinatory flowers with their northern neighbors, the Totomac. With a shiny new alliance forged up in cloud nine, the Totomac decide to jump right in the conflict.
The Totomac waste no time in sieging their new enemies to the east.
Chinook scholars study hard, advancing their military technology to six, while the rest of Mesoamerica stays at four. Strange four-legged beasts are found on a children's field trip and brought back to the capital, Totorames.
Architects insist that a new building, barracks, can be built — but the native council refuses to accept the blueprints, saying that their whole entire government — No, their whole entire way of life! — must be reformed before allowing such a building.
Meanwhile, the Chinook warriors gain ground to the east, while the loyal Itza siege the Totomac to the north.
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Will the Chinook finally claim victory? Will flowers go extinct from over-harvesting? Find out this, and more, or maybe even less, on the next posting of
Chinook, Defenders of North America!
