Angevinia
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Last edit by: Gylias (talk · contrib) · Last edited on Sat, 08 Aug 2020 14:54:11 +0000
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Commonwealth of Cydalia Commonwealth a Cydalia (Cydalian) Keenchrei fun Cydalia (Deitsch) Roiaum d'Cydalie (Qadian) Cofhlaiths 'a Cydalia (Scoshun) Ganonsyoni Cydalia (Iroquoian) Cydalia Nutohkemminnit (Algonquian) | |
|---|---|
 Flag
 Coat of arms
| |
| Motto: An Appeal ta Heaven | |
| Anthem: Abner Mendez Cydalia Forever  | |
 Cydalia (red) in Merica, circa 2319. | |
| Capital | Awlbany |
| Largest city | New Hahtland |
| Official languages | Cydalian English |
| Recognised national languages | Cydalian English Deitsch Qadian Scoshun Iroquoian Algonquian |
| Recognised regional languages | Deitsch Qadian Scoshun Iroquoian Algonquian |
| Ethnic groups | Cydalian (77.1%) Deitsch (7.8%) |
| Demonym(s) | Cydalian |
| Government | Semi-Constitutional Falango-Integralist Monarchy |
• King | Planter Dogood |
• Head of Pahlament | David Zekara |
| Legislature | Pahlament |
| The Elected | |
| The Appointed | |
| History | |
• First New English Colony | November 3rd 1620 |
• American Independence | July 4th 1776/September 3rd 1783 |
• The Great Collapse | April 15th, 2049 |
• Foundation of Cydalia | April 28th 2100 |
• Formation of the Commonwealth | December 31st 2221 - January 1st 2222 |
• Cemented Status | 2260 |
| Population | |
• 2319 estimate | 20,165,201 |
| GDP (nominal) | estimate |
• Total | GDP Not used |
• Per capita | GDP Not used (GDP Not used) |
| Gini | Gini not used Error: Invalid Gini value |
| HDI | 0.937 very high |
| Currency | None (N/A) |
| Time zone | Eastern Standard Time |
| Date format | dd-mm-yy |
| Driving side | right |
| Calling code | +07 |
| Internet TLD | .cy |
Cydalia, officially the Commonwealth of Cydalia or the Cydalian Commonwealth (Cydalian: Commonwealth a Cydalia), is a sovereign nation located in northeastern Merica. Cydalia is bordered by Ronto, Québec, and Canada to the northwest, Newfinlan to the northeast, Federalia and Marval to the south and Erie to the west. In addition, it also borders a section of wildlands that it frequently attempts to bring civilization to. Compared to other Merican nations, Cydalia is a sizeable ## km2 (### sq mi), making it one of the largest nations in Merica, with an estimated 2319 population of 20.1 million. The country's population centres are spread across the coastlines of the nation, but vast tracks of rural and untouched land still remain, alongside ample nature preserves. It is a Semi-Constitutional Falango-Integralist Monarchy with the capital in New Hahtland, while the country's largest city is Awlbany. The main cultural and commercial centre of the nation is widely considered to be New Hahtland. The Declahration of the Commonwealth establishes the state as Catholic and absolute, with its sovereignty derived from both God and the military.
Pre-Collapse, what is now Cydalia was inhabited by Native American tribes before being conquered and colonized by mainly British and French settlers. It served as a religious hub for Puritanism, and while known as New England, Cydalia proved instrumental in the American Revolution. America emerged as a heavily New England-influenced nation during it's beginning, and solidified it's power all over what is now Merica through Manifest destiny. During the 1950s and onwards, Cydalia and America both experienced vast cultural shifts and changes - and re-development - and helped America form the American Empire, widely considered by archaeologists and historians to have been the most powerful empire on the face of the Earth. Despite this power, the cultural changes, economic problems, demographic changes, political instability, and climate change would together prove to be too much for the American Empire to handle, and that, mixed with pushes by far left, far right, and anarcho-primitivist extremists, would cause a civil war in the late 2020s and early 2030s, leading to an eventual collapse of American and Canadian society in the 2030s and 2040s. During the Second American Civil War, what is Cydalia widely sided with the unsuccessful Democratic Forces and Antifascist militias, which were methodically wiped out by defecting units of the American military, the Gilead Compact, and various far-right militias. Despite this, the ruin brought to America proved too much for it to recover in time before the Great Collapse in 2049, in which the world was thrown into chaos by the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano at the hands of Kaczynskiist extremists.
After the events of the Great Collapse, the Kingdom of Cydalia was founded after the various towns and cities in what was the Connecticut River Valley allied one another in 2100, and elected Karl Dogood as their first King. Over the following centuries, through diplomacy and warfare, the Cydalians would expand both eastward and westward, conquering the Hudson and the rest of Massachusetts, before spreading north into what was Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and eventually the Maritimes. Additionally, they also expanded southwards into Deitsch territory, annexing most of what was Pennsylvania. In 2221 and into 2222, the Cydalians formed the Cydalian Commonwealth, officially adding the other territories of their Kingdom alongside tributaries into one grand Empire. These included the Cydalian Heartland, Hudsonia, the Deitschrei, Qadia, Scosha, and more. The capital city is the historic Awlbany (Albany) and it is home to roughly over 350,000 people, making it the third largest city in the Commonwealth. The King is currently Planter Dogood, the executive head of state. The Head of Pahlament is David Zekara, the appointed head of Pahlament. Pahlament, alongside society in general, is mainly dominated by the monarch-led Cydonian Falangist-Integralist Party, or CFIP.
Throughout its long history, Cydalia has been a leading global center of culture, reform, tradition, and more, with it making significant contributions to art, science, theology, industry, and philosophy. Cydalia is a great power with significant cultural, economic, military, and political influence. A developed country with the a high standard of living, Cydalians enjoy a good quality of life, and the country performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, and human development. Cydalia is a member of the Forum for International Dialogue, and was a founding member of the Merican Union, with King Franklin II proposing the idea himself in 2299.
Etymology
Cydalia, translated, roughly means "land of the cider makers." The name 'Cydalia' derives from the old New England English term for "cider," a drink popular in what was then considered "New England" both pre and post-Collapse. During the times after the collapse, the peoples around the newly flooded Connecticut River valley turned to making apple cider, both soft and hard ciders, as a mean of making excess money for trade. Additionally, hard cider was used as alcohol, a popular commodity. Over the centuries, the evolution of New England English into more local dialects changed the preferred phonetic spelling of "cider" to "cyda." Likewise, this began to refer to the inhabitants of Cydalia, who became famous for their cider, spreading through trade and war.
Since its formation and the cementing of it's status, the Commonwealth is more of a title than an actual meaning. Acting more akin to an Empire in function, the term "Commonwealth" for Cydalia harkens back to the days of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the most populous states in what was America and New England before the Great Collapse.
While post-Colonial languages such as Cydalian, Scoshun, Qadian, and Deitsch refer to Cydalia directly as a Commonwealth, the two official native languages, Algonquian and Iroquoian, don't do so directly. Officially, the two languages, which are revivalist languages with heavily modified vocabulary to be a "pan-native" language pertaining to each of their original families. Have extremely complex grammar systems which makes direct translations into Colonial languages difficult. In Iroquoian, Cydalia's official term, rather than "Commonwealth," is "Ganonsyoni Cydalia," which roughly translates to "Cydalia, The Lodge Extended Lengthwise," and has its origins in the now extinct Mohawk language. On the other side of Cydalia, the Algonquian language refers to Cydalia as the "Cydalia Nutohkemminnit," or "Place of our Cydalian Land." The term originates from the now-extinct Massachusett language. While "Nutohkemminnit" originally referred to a now submerged place in eastern Massachusetts, the term has been re-fitted by the Cydalian government and the Algonquian people to refer to Cydalia as a whole.
History
Cydalia has a long, rich history that is generally divided by modern scholars into two schools: the Minamian (Geological) and the Spenglerian (Sociological) schools, both of which are post-Collapse schools of historical thought. In spite of both being post-Collapse schools of thought, both are named for pre-Collapse scholars. The Minamian school of thought, named after Katsuyuki Minami, generally follows the belief that geography and land creates the majority of history unique to a culture or society living in it. They tend to study how a civilization interacts with the land throughout the course of history. The Spenglerian school of thought, named after Oswald Spengler, believes, on the contrary, that the culture, beliefs, customs, and in some cases race, of a society is what forms the majority of impactful history.
The following history section attempts to merge the two into a history of the country in as seamless a way as it possibly can.
Early History, Native Americans, and the Iroquois
Cydalia was inhabited for millennia before the first arrival of Europeans. Archaeologists generally consider what is now Cydalia to have been first inhabited around anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Closer to the first European settlements, a wide variety of Native tribes lived within the borders of modern-day Cydalia. Within these, there were two main subgroups, both of whom are classified by language. These were the Algonquian speaking tribes, and the Iroquoian speaking tribes. Algonquian speaking tribes, such as the Abenaki, Pequots, and Wampanoag tended to live more towards the Atlantic coastline, though other tribes lived inland. Most Iroquoian speaking tribes lived more inland, around the modern-day Districts of Upstate, Capitol, and Niagra. The majority of these tribes practiced a mix of agriculture, hunting and gathering, and tribes living by larger bodies of water tended to fish. Natives during this time are generally considered to have lived largely "in harmony" with the natural environment. Additionally, the majority of these tribal communities tended to be closely knit together, and were generally made up of a few extended families living within the same area, though this differed from region to region. Algonquians tended to live in wigwams, which were small houses or huts made of bark with buckskin covered doors, and Iroquoian speaking peoples generally lived in longhouses.
Native Americans at this time were, despite vast differences in culture, strikingly similar to Europeans of the time when they arrived. Much like the soon-to-be colonials, Native Americans had tribal conflicts, civil wars, differing spiritual beliefs, different languages, and other differences in overall culture. Likewise, they competed with one another for resources, social clout, trade and economic gain, and military power. Many even formed various confederacies or loose alliances of tribes. These rivalries would persist for decades, even after the arrival of Europeans. In some cases, tribes of both Iroquoian and Algonquian stock had trade routes that could run back all the way to the Dakotas or Rockies, though this was extremely rare.
In Cydalia, the largest pre-European, and for a brief time, post-European political power was the Iroquoian-speaking Haudenosaunee, meaning "People of the Longhouse." It was commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy. The Confederacy was founded sometime between 1150 and 1420, and most Native American myths place this founding as the consequence of a man known as Skennenrahawi, or the "Great Peacemaker." The founding myth generally states that with his allies Jigonhsasee and Hiawatha; a woman who provided free hospitality to passing warriors, and a famous orator of the Onondaga respectively, helped him achieve his vision of a "transcommunity." A "transcommunity" in the Skennenrahawian sense is generally believed to mean a sense of an everlasting peaceful community between all Iroquoian peoples, regardless of any disturbance. It was formed by five tribes, which were the Seneca, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, and the Cayuga. All of these tribes were, according to myth, taught certain spiritual guidelines by the Great Peacemaker, who defied situations that would have killed most people, such as drowning in a river, and successfully predicting a solar eclipse. A sixth tribe, the Tuscarora, would join them in the early 1700s after losing their homes in war. Regardless of what caused them to join up, the Iroquois would expand their territory and dominion throughout Merica, eventually spreading from what is now around Awlbany to Chicagoland and the border regions of even Minasota.
Starting a few decades after the Columbian Exchange, European monarchies sent out explorers and cartographers to scout out new possible lands for colonies and trade routes. These included people like Giovanni da Verrazzano, and Jacques Cartier on behalf of France, along with John Smith and John Cabot on behalf of England. By 1500, Europeans started to trade with the Natives, mainly for beaver furs. Within modern Cydalia, most of the first explorers came from Western and Northern Europe, more specifically England, France, and the Netherlands. Sweden also made attempts at colonization, but these were largely failures. Exploring the Cydalian coastline and making a few incursions inland, no real European settlements of any note were made before the early 1620s. Starting around the 1620s, European monarchies began issuing official charters that would allow their citizens and companies to colonize certain areas of the "New World." The majority of these were established on "sea to sea" bases or those regarding shorelines.
European Colonialism
Two charters were issued for the "Virginia Company of London" and the "Virginia Company of Plymouth" on the 10th of April, 1606. Requiring each company to maintain at least 100 miles of separation from one another, both companies set out to start colonies on the east coast of Merica. Provided that the colonies did not conflict with one another, they had almost limitless reign to settle wherever they pleased. The name "New England" was officially given to the colonies on the 3rd of November, 1620, when the charter of the Plymouth Company was replayed with a royal charter on behalf of the "Plymouth Council for New England," which itself was a joint-stock company that was made to colonize and govern the general region. Established in 1620 by the Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony would become the first permanent settlement in New England.
The Pilgrims, as they are popularly known, were a group of roughly 100 or so English Puritan Protestants who had spent the previous few years in the Netherlands. Originally fleeing English territory due to religious differences, they accepted English rule again provided they were allowed to keep both their culture and their religion, which the English crown accepted. Plymouth Colony would later be absorbed into Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. Within the colony, a Puritan society was created, making a politically innovative, deeply religious, and socially tight-knit community. This was in an attempt to create a religious utopia, referred to them as a "nation of saints" or a proverbial "city upon a hill."
Initially, relations between the Colonists and the Native Americans tended to be neutral or positive, though these would quickly sour.
In stark contrast to the Puritans, people such as Roger Williams preached a more liberal and libertarian doctrine of religious tolerance, secular government, and a complete break from the Church of England. For this, he was banished from Massachusetts and led himself and his followers south, where he founded the Providence Plantations in 1636. It soon merged with local settlements to form the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which became a safehaven for religious minorities such as Quakers, Baptists, and Jews. During the Antinomian Controversy, a religious dispute over the covenant of grace, Anne Hutchinson and her followers also moved to the colony. Earlier that same year, the Connecticut Colony received a charter from the crown, and established a government and absorbed the neighboring New Haven Colony. At this time, what were to become the New Hampshire Colony and the future American state of Maine were governed by Massachusetts. New Hampshire would split off multiple times, first in 1629, again in 1679, and finally in 1689.
Dutch Colonies were also established, although this was brief. Henry Hudson departed Amsterdam on April 4, 1609. He reached the Hudson River by September of the same year. He sailed upwards to Albany, and his voyage was used to establish Dutch Colonies and trading claims in the Upstate District for the fur trade. Albany, or present day Awlbany, was established sometime around 1614 under the command of Hendrick Christiaensen. New Netherland, as it was called, would be conquered by British soldiers after a war in 1664. Lenient peace treaties kept further conflicts from breaking out between the English and the Dutch. New York City, then Nieuw Amsterdam, was renamed to "New York City." Beverwijck was renamed to Albany. Both of these were named after King James II, who was Duke of both York and Albany in the British Isles.
Most of Northern and Northeastern Cydalia was settled by Viking explorers from Scandinavia around 1000 AD. The L'Anse aux Meadows settlement was dated by archaeologists to around that time, and despite being in Newfinlan, it is likely that further incursions into modern Cydalian borders were made. Viking and Native sources from the region tell of battles between Vikings and "Skraelings," and genetic testing of archaeological remains show that some native Beothuk had Nordic admixture, and Viking weaponry and tools.
Centuries later, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano, working on behalf of England and France, were the first Europeans to sail inland around the Maritimes. Several Portuguese explorers such as Diego Homem documented them as well. The first Europeans to explore them in depth was Jacques Cartier and his crew, who made the first detailed exploration of the region a few years later. Claiming the land for France, Cartier was followed by others who established the second permanent European settlement at the time in 1604. One of these, Samuel de Champlain, went on to become the founder of New France's province of "Canada," which includes modern day Longshore, Shortshore, and Qadia.
James II of England became worried of the increasingly independent ways of the Colonies, such as their own self-governing charters, Navigation Acts, and increasing local military power. Declaring the Dominion of New England in 1686, he combined all of New England's colonies alongside the Province of New York and the Province of New Jersey, which were added within two years of it being founded. Proving highly unpopular at the time due to it taking away the local government leaders elected by the Colonists, the Connecticut Colony refused to deliver their charter to the Governor of the dominion, Edmund Andros. When King James was removed from power in 1689's Glorious Revolution, the city of Boston revolted against Andros' rule and arrested him. Andros was sent back to England in chains, though he would later be sent back to administer other parts of England's colonies.
British Colonies
By 1700, the majority of what would become Cydalia was under British rule. New England, Pennsylvania, and the Maritimes were undoubtedly under British Command, with Upstate New York being ruled by the Haudenosaunee and the Districts of Longshore and Shortshore being under French rule as parts of Québec. With the exile of Governor Andros, Massachusetts was reorganized into the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Dominion of New England was abolished. Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Nova Scotia would break off and form their own separate colonies under the British crown by the end of the decade.
Due to the revolt against Andros, colonial military and militia defenses were withdrawn from the frontiers of the region, and in turn, they suffered a long series of raids from French forces and their Native allies, mainly coming from Canada and Acadia. Queen Anne's War broke out in 1702, over the European War of Spanish Succession, and lasted until 1713. Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley played a major role in organizing colonial defenses, and the number of raids, even during the war, dropped significantly. Dudley launched military expeditions into Acadia in 1704, 1707, and 1709. The first two of these three proved successful, while the last one was called off. Troops were called up to serve again in 1710, and the Acadian capital of Port-Royal was captured.
At this time, the colony had issued a paper currency. Due to the wars, the value of said currency was constantly in decline leading to a number of financial crises. Attempts to create a bank were made, but Governors Dudley and Samuel Shute were opposed to the idea. All governors during this time tried to convince the general courts both in England and the Colonies to fix salaries for officials appointed by the British Crown. During the reign of Governor William Burnet, he held a provincial assembly in session for six months, moving it twice during session attempting to force the wage issue.
He was unsuccessful.
Starting in the 1720s, raids yet again began to hit frontier villages in Massachusetts, encouraged by the French. The proprietors of these raids were primarily the Abenaki and allied Native tribes. They were stopped by Governor William Dummer, and most of the Abenaki retreated from New England into Canada, not to return until after the Collapse centuries later.
During the 1730s, Governor Jonathan Belcher disputed the legislature's power to make direct appropriations of property and funds, and vetoed bills that didn't give him the freedom to pay out money how he wanted to. The provincial treasury of Massachusetts Bay was usually empty due to this. Belcher permitted the Board of Trade to accept grants from the legislature in lieu of fixed salaries, and the currency crisis flared up again during his aministration, resulting in the "Land Back Proposal" which Belcher personally opposed. Belcher's personal opponents in London schemed to have him removed and established a bank, but it died soon after due to an act of British Parliament dissolving it without question. Because of this, a number of the Colonial elite and landed gentry began to turn against the crown, and turn against the British Parliament was well.
Minor wars and skirmishes happened quite often throughout the British and French colonies throughout the 1730s and 1740s, and this would come to a head in the early 1750s. The French and Indian War began in 1754, and would last until 1763. This was, at the time, the largest conflict on the Merican continent. This war formed a major chapter in the imperial feud between Britain and France that had lasted for centuries. French expeditions into the Ohio River valley brought French merchants and soldiers into regular conflict with British colonialists, mainly from Virginia, and their native allies. The French would build Fort Duquense around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It became an incredibly strategic foothold and fought back multiple British assaults. Initially, the French and their Native allies won a long, brutal series of military victories against the British during the first years of the war, going so far as to kill the leader of all British forces in Merica -- Edward Braddock. Alongside Edward Braddock was the young George Washington, who would go on to become the first president of the United States of America. Braddock's successor, Massachusetts Governor William Shirley, was also defeated. Due to concerns about the loyalties of French speaking Acadians in Nova Scotia were with France and not Britain, Governor Shirley expelled thousands of Acadians to other British colonies throughout the course of the war and the years following. Those who remained would become the founding stock of today's Qadians. During the first few years, the British military efforts were in complete shambles, suffering defeat after defeat due to a myriad of reasons. These were due to poor command, lack of interest in Britain, France having more Native allies, rivalries among British Colonies, and an extreme lack of monetary support.
Britain would declare war on France officially in 1756, starting the European theatre of the war, called the Seven Years' War. The new British commander in Merica, Lord Loudon, also suffered numerous defeats. This began to change in 1757 because William Pitt, Britain's warmaster, devised a plan to tie down French forces in Europe whilst British troops took as many French colonies as they possibly could. He believed that colonial conflicts such as these were the key to building a worldwide British Empire. Paying off Prussia and other German States to fight France in Europe, the French military was soon tied down as Pitt had planned. The first major British victory came in 1758, when they took Louisbourg at the mouth of the St. Lawrence river. By the year's end, they took Forts Frontenac and Duquense. British General James Wolfe and the French General, the Marquis de Montcalm, were fatally wounded in the British victory on the Plains of Abraham in September 1759. The Battle of Quebec and the ensuing siege and taking of Montreal in the following year resulted in the complete loss of Canada by the French. Spain joined the European war against Britain, and they too began to lose colonial territories at the hands of the British.
The rest of the war would be relatively uneventful in Merica. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in the February of 1763. Britain took Canada and Florida from France and Spain respectively and swapped around some Spanish and French colonies. They also arranged to allow for further British expansion inland. For the most part however, the war was somewhat pointless regarding the losses of France and Spain, who would spend the time up until the Napoleonic Wars trading the same colonies with one another. The British debt doubled during the war. Due to this, the amount of taxes that British colonists in the Thirteen Colonies had to pay was increased by a massive amount, and King George III installed British military units in the Merican colonies. Both of these increased the financial stress that the Colonists had to pay out, exponentially so. In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which was the first tax levied on American Colonists specifically by Parliament. It was met by strong resistance, and, despite this, the British Parliament increased the amount of taxes. These included the Tea Act, which required Colonists to buy tea from only British merchants, and the Townshend Acts. The Townshend Acts increased taxes on lead, tea (which was in popular demand but limited supply), paint, glass, and paper. Additionally, it made it legal for British soldiers to search Colonial homes and businesses without warning. All nations in Merica today may have abandoned money, but this was simply not the case back during the Colonial period. Simply put, these acts, in the eyes of the Colonists, were destroying entire livelihoods and families via economic warfare.
As is common in societies facing oppressive governments, social strife, and other forms of constant stress, political radicalization became more and more common. The "Sons of Liberty," a "classical liberal" organization, was founded in 1765. They were a secret society and a revolutionary group that was created in British North America to advance the rights of white, European Colonists and to fight the new taxes that they saw levied upon them. It officially disbanded after the repeal of the Stamp Act a year later in 1766, but the name was used by successor groups and secessionist groups in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. The most important thing that the Sons of Liberty did, according to modern Cydalian historians and scholars, was provide a unified front for both democratic/republican thought and secessionist movements, alongside forming a sense of unity amongst the Thirteen Colonies.
One of the worst political incidents regarding British rule was the Boston Massacre, which began as a fight between several Colonial civilians and a single British soldier, and soon escalated into a group of British soldiers firing on civilians in public, killing five and wounding many more. The ensuing media debacle lasted months and stirred up tensions for a long time, and ended up with Colonials being incredibly angry at local British officials, and with British soldiers increasing efforts within the local countryside.
For the next few years, Colonials, especially those in cities like Boston, would spend their free time openly harassing British Government officials. In the countryside, tax collectors were commonly abducted, stripped of clothes, and had hot tar poured over them, followed by feathers. "Tarring and feathering" was a practice that could easily result in serious, life threatening injuries, and in many cases, death.
The largest response to British tax policy came on December 16th of 1773. That night, in Boston Harbor, members of the Sons of Liberty dressed up in Native costume and stormed British ships, breaking crates of tea and throwing them into the harbor. The "Boston Tea Party" as it came to be known, was the boiling over of Colonial resistance. Feeling that their rights as Englishmen were being violated then, and were in jeopardy of being further violated by unjust taxes (the cry "no taxation without representation" was reportedly a slogan used by some Sons of Liberty Groups), the Colonials and many of their supporters spoke out in favor of the Tea Party, citing it as a form of protest. The British Government, in turn, responded with the Coercive Acts, or, in the Colonies as they were known, the Intolerable Acts. One such part of the Intolerable Acts permitted the stationing of British soldiers inside Colonial households without asking for any permissions of their own citizenry. The Intolerable Acts took away any rights that Massachusetts had, and it additionally took away all self government the Colony had. Hoping to isolate Massachusetts and prove an example of it, the plan backfired when essentially every other British Colony in the Thirteen Colonies stood in solidarity with Massachusetts. To this day in Cydalia, every major public blunder, government scandal, or argument by groups of people or individuals where all are seen by the majority to be morally in the wrong is affectionately referred to as a "Tea Party."
American Revolution, Half-Independence
In response to the Intolerable Acts, Colonial delegates from every Colony except Georgia (Bermuda was included) joined in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in September of 1774 in an attempt to create a unified voice in their problems against the British. The "First Continental Congress," as it was known, didn't demand independence from the British. It's grievances consisted mainly of the stationing of British soldiers in the Colonies without the consent of the Colonials, and the higher taxes without corresponding political representation within British Parliament. Using British law as a base, the Congress issued a statement that declared "rights due to every citizen," such as life, liberty, property, trial by juries of peers, and assembly. This proved absolutely useless in persuading the British. Congress moved and voted to meet again later in the spring of the next year, though this meeting never happened.
In late 1774, local leaders created the Suffolk Resolves in an attempt to resist British power over Massachusetts in the wake of the Tea Party. Local assemblies responded by creating a Patriot led-provisional government known at the time as the "Massachusetts Provincial Congress." It began training local militias in the possibility of British retaliation, and in February of 1775, Britain declared that Massachusetts was in a state of rebellion, and began increasing the numbers of troops deployed to the Colony.
In the early morning hours of April 19th in 1775, a few hundred British soldiers, mainly from the 52nd Regiment of Foot, marched towards Concord, Massachusetts. Reportedly, an arms cache was stationed in Concord, and Colonial militia was preparing it to use against the British. Colonial militia from Concord and nearby towns were quickly alerted by riders and couriers who informed them to organize and stand their ground against the British. A few hours later, the local militias met the British soldiers on the Lexington Common in the morning. With around 100 people gathered to watch the spectacle before them, Colonial Militia came out from a local tavern and met the British at sunrise. Standing each other down, the Colonists began to disperse when a single shot rang out, and British troops opened fire. Eight militiamen were killed. The "shot heard 'round the world" played a major role in the American Empire's founding "mythos."
Lexington and Concord formed the first battle of the American Revolution. Compared to the eight deaths suffered by the Colonists, the British only took one casualty. Outnumbered, the militia retreated while the British pushed onward to destroy the weapons. In Concord, around 400 Colonials met 100 British at the North Bridge, and exchanged fire. Both sides took losses. With their search for supplies having been "completed," the British began to fall back to Boston. Due to the actions of the messengers, what was initially a small group of militiamen soon grew rapidly to around 4,000 soldiers that harassed and opened fire on the British all the way back to Boston. When in Boston and Charlestown, the Colonials, heavily outnumbering the British, began to lay siege to the city. The battle marked the beginning of the American Revolution.
In the wake of the battle, practically every member of the Thirteen Colonies expelled royal officials and formed a loose coalition of states allied to the rebel cause. With Boston under siege, American expeditions to the north were met with mixed results. An incursion into Québec and Canada as a whole proved fruitless and disastrous, but Vermont was taken and Fort Ticonderoga in Upstate New York was raided for artillery, which proved incredibly successful. During this time, the Continental Congress met again and attempted to make peace with the Crown, though this proved futile. The Colonists sent their artillery back from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, where the shelling of the city and the surrounding area resulted in a slow evacuation from the city.
The neighboring Haudenosaunee, at the time, attempted to remain neutral at the time. Christian missionaries within their borders attempted to sway individual tribes to go to one side or another, and eventually a 4/2 split was reached. The Tuscarora and the Oneida sided with the Americans, while the the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca sided with the British. The main reason as to why the Haudenosaunee couldn't remain neutral was simply due to their proximity to the conflict, and the fact that occasional skirmishes were breaking out between Colonists who, now seeing themselves freed from British law, decided to encroach on Haudenosaunee land.
One of the most pivotal battles was the Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place in Boston. Colonial forces stood up against an assault from British soldiers, and though it was technically a victory for the British, they took more than double the losses of the Colonial militia, and additionally suffered a heavy loss of their officers, who were targeted by the militias to disrupt command.
By April of 1776, most British forces had fully evacuated from Massachusetts and other areas of New England, but they remained in the Maritimes. After regrouping in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the British began launching a series of counter offensives in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In July of 1776, the Continental Congress signed a universal Declaration of Independence, which was regarded by most Western scholars as the official date of the United States of America. British counter offensives continued throughout 1776 and 1777. In the late summer and early fall of 1777, Philadelphia was captured and abandoned by the British twice, and the Americans were forced to relocate their capitol from Philadelphia.
During this time, the British launched what is now referred to by historians as the Saratoga Campaign. Attempting to gain control over the large and maneuverable Hudson River valley in upstate New York (present day Upstate, Haudenosaunee, Capitol, and Niagra Districts), the British and the majority of the Haudenosaunee met around Saratoga Springs. A brief skirmish occurred in September, resulting in a British victory. However, the next month, the two sides met again and a resounding victory was had for the Americans, and the British army in the area surrendered to them. The Battle of Saratoga is generally regarded as possibly the most important battle in the entire war itself, due to the resulting geopolitical impacts that it had on the wider revolution as a whole. Until this point, foreign intervention on the side of the Americans was minimal with the exception of a few military advisers from Poland, France, and Prussia. The British, on the other hand, used a large amount of German mercenaries, commonly referred to as "Hessians," to provide extra troops and firepower in addition to local loyalists. Because of the resounding victory at Saratoga, both the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of Spain, major European powers on the continent, decided to help out the Americans with both troops and materials.
In both Saratoga and Bunker Hill, the more agile, Native inspired, and hit-and-run guerrilla tactics used by the Colonists proved incredibly effective when combined with their more drab, casual style clothing and uniforms. The British generally stuck out due to their red uniforms, meaning that it was much easier to hit them in forested and more natural environments with adequate cover.
In more northern regions of modern Cydalia, privateers working on behalf of the Americans, such as John Paul Jones, launched regular raids and expeditions into Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (New Brunswick was not created until the war was over), and additionally made frequent attempts - generally successful - to turn the local Natives against the British. The most notable of the tribes that ended up supporting the American cause were the Maliseet and the Mi'kmaq, though the Mi'kmaq were known for their dubious loyalties to either side. During the course of the war, thousands of Loyalists to the British crown would emigrate from the Thirteen Colonies to the Maritimes due to their close proximity, and also due to the amount of open territory due to the deportation of the Acadians.
In addition, despite being outnumbered, the British government in London came under heavy scrutiny and public ridicule due to the public opinion that the British Army under General Burgoyne had surrendered too quickly and without putting up much of a fight, if any, at all. Additionally, other states such as the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Mysore started to help out the Americans with what little they could, as they were already tied down in other conflicts against the British at the time. King George III largely ignored American issues while Britain was involved in European wars. Failing to find allies on the continent to engage France and Spain, he tried in vain to sway the Dutch, but due to public opinions, the Dutch not only turned down the British offer, they began to aid the Americans. The British would declare war in 1780. Furthermore, in America, many of the Native allies of the British deserted, declared peace with the Americans or neutrality, or turned on them. The Haudenosaunee had basically collapsed in certain regions of upstate New York, resulting in the entire confederation being damaged politically.
The defeat at Saratoga spelled the collapse of most British and allied efforts in the north. As a result, the remainder of the war would be fought mainly in the Mid-Atlantic and the Southern Colonies. The British would suffer a final defeat at Yorktown in Virginia in 1781, and a peace treaty was officially signed in 1783, with the Americans gaining almost all the territory east of the Mississippi River.
As the war continued on, the Iroquois officially broke their union after centuries of collective government and solid unification. At the end of the war, fears that the Colonists would not hear out the Iroquois became manifest. The cause of this is generally regarded to be the four-and-two split between the Iroquois support, though it is equally likely that this ensuing series of events would have happened regardless. The Americans did not find the Haudenosaunee trustworthy after the war, even the two tribes that had decided to support them. With the end of the war in 1783, the Treaty of Paris dictated peace between the Americans and Europeans - all native powers were left out and the Americans were able to do whatever they saw fit to do in regards to treatment of the Natives.
Most of Northern and Northeastern Cydalia were still under British rule, though a small series of conflicts would erupt over the border of the US state of Maine up until the 1840s.
Industrial Era
What is now Cydalia was a very early center of the industrial revolution. Until the late 1700s and early 1800s, most industry in Cydalia was done either in small workshops or at home. Because of this, overall industrial output was rather limited, though most of the artisans involved in production of goods became highly skilled in their individual trades. In the late 1780s, areas of southern and eastern New England began to see weaving and textile mills begin to take off, with the first cotton mill being founded in Beverly, Massachusetts (near Boston) in 1787 to great success. More continued to be established in urban areas, and then in 1794, the cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney. The invention of the cotton gin made preparing and processing cotton very efficient, making the already rich and profitable cotton and textile trades into massive international industries.
In 1812, America and Britain went to war yet again, this time over the impressment of sailors and minor border disputes. The British won the majority of the battles in the conflict, and almost every important battle within modern Cydalian borders resulted in a resounding American defeat. In addition, New England, feeling somewhat "left out" due to America due to the negative view of the War of 1812, began to construct a sense of regional identity.
Cotton and other textile mills continued to be set up in and around the Boston area, and eventually spread to other urban areas of New England. By the early 1800s, many towns such as Lawrence and Lowell in Massachusetts, Manchester in New Hampshire, Woonsocket in Rhode Island, and Lewiston in Maine had all become industrial centers full of textile mills. Following models from the Slater Mills and the Beverly Cotton Mill, they quickly and efficiently put out as much cotton products as they possibly could.
The industry in New England grew rapidly, causing a shortage of workers. While initially limited to only local women, mill agents and advisers hired recruiters to hire young women and even children from the countryside to work in textile factories. Where previously women would work on the farm alongside the rest of their families, thousands of farm girls and children left rural homes and farmsteads in New England and in some cases places further away to work inside textile mills. While most hoped to aid their families with their pay, others wanted to save up for marriage or widen their horizons for other limited careers in the future. The majority of the textile mill workers were women. Originally, almost all came from original British-New England stock, though as the industrial revolution increased, the amount of workers of Irish descent increased dramatically due to immigration.
Many of the industrial mills ended up using a model similar to the industrial model used by Samuel Slater and his first mills. In the model, entire families were invited to work in the urban towns and cities that hosted the mills. Housing and apartments would be built for the workers and their families, alongside company stores and company-built civic buildings. Later on, industries other than the textile and cotton trades began to spring up. These included shoemaking, machinery, firearms, watches, shipbuilding, and musical instruments. The concept of "Yankee ingenuity" became a common stereotype in New England.
Of note, however, is the quality of life in the mills. Work in the textile mills and other factories was often cruel and relatively unrewarding. Few wage and labor laws existed, meaning that women and children would often be required to work long hours for little pay. Depending on the industry, accidents, injuries, and even deaths were common. Insurance didn't exist, meaning that any worker who was injured either had to continue working, find a substitute, or risk losing their job. Additionally, bosses could fire and lay off entire groups of workers at their digression, meaning that workers who were injured were generally fired. Additionally, being fired risked not only the individual worker losing their home and their livelihood, but their entire families losing their home and livelihood.
Meanwhile, in the Northern and Northeastern Districts, the capitalist economies of the Canadian Maritimes experienced a "Golden Age" during the middle of the Industrial Revolution. Economic growth was massive, and the region had one of British North America's largest and most extensive sectors of manufacturing. Additionally, they had a large shipping industry that moved products all over the British Empire and the world at large. This "Golden Age" lasted until unification with the remainder of Canada. During this period, the Maritimes experienced a period of rapid technological development regarding the production of goods and their ship-based transport methods.
American Civil War
Golden Age of America
World War One and the Interwar Period
Great Depression
World War Two and the Postwar Boom and Bust
The Great Depression in the United States of the 1930s hit the region hard, with high unemployment in the industrial cities. The Democrats appealed to factory workers and especially Catholics, pulling them into the New Deal coalition and making the once-Republican region into one that was closely divided. However, need for war materials such as munitions, ships, electronics, and uniforms during World War II caused a burst of prosperity in every sector. In Canada, much of the same happened as well. In both areas, the then-declining textile industry experienced a boom as the need for bandages and uniforms increased exponentially.
Every single region of Cydalia participated in the war, with the then-Canadian provinces entering the war alongside Britain in 1939, with the American states joining in late 1941 and early 1942. Soon after, most of the region was acting as a staging ground for both troops and convoys being sent to the Western European and North African theaters of combat.
Throughout the War, hundreds of thousands of Americans and Canadians fought under their respective banners and their Allies against the combined powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and minor Axis nations. Though separated by an ocean on either side, the North Americans involved in World War Two had a massive effect on the overall war effort. For example, Leonard Warren Murray was a Canadian Naval Officer from Granton, Nova Scotia (sunk) who was the only Canadian from World War 1 or World War 2 to command an Allied Theatre of operations. Additionally, Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, from Northumberland, Pennsylvania, was the last surviving member of the crew of the Enola Gay. He participated in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the subsequent end of World War 2 in the Pacific Theatre, fighting against the Empire of Japan.
Other groups that what is now Cydalia contributed to the war effort would be the 26th US Infantry Division, nicknamed the "Yankee Division." The 26th played a role in liberating the Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp, where between 123,000 and 320,000 Nazi political prisoners and other prisoners were executed via forced labor between the Anschluß (Anschluss) of August 1938 and the end of World War 2 in April-May 1945. According to historical documents, the actions of the Yankee Division prevented the Waffen-SS from burying thousands of prisoners alive.
With the end of the war in the European theatre, most Canadian and American soldiers were sent home to North America.
The 1950s saw a massive economic boom for the nations of the United States and Canada. The predominantly Anglo-cultured population was convinced that, with the end of the war, there would only be peace and prosperity. For the most part, they proved to be correct. Though there were conflicts in Korea and in parts of Africa, for Merica, no major conflicts occurred from 1945 until the 1960s. The capitalist economy boomed, the population grew, and the overall culture also grew immensely. American culture started to dominate the west through their economic and military power, and even previously culturally independent nations such as Mexico, Britain, Canada, and France began to take after the United States in culture.
Cold War
Most factories in New England started to go out of business during the 1930s because of the Great Depression, but World War Two and the postwar boom managed to hold this off until the 1960s, when the job losses and economic stagnation resumed. With the factory economy essentially gone, New England towns and cities fell into a long, painful, economic decay. The textile mills were mostly all out of business by the 1970s, with the last major ones closing the the mid and late 1980s. With the closure of each mill, hundreds to thousands of jobs were lost.
All that really remained of the New England and Maritime economy was primarily service, agriculture, and then a widely different variety of high end technological manfucaturing. Weapons such as nuclear submarines, jet engines, and robotics were made for the United States and Canadian militaries, while medicine also experienced a large boom, with some major medical advances being made in southern New England. Additionally, MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) invented the pre-Collapse format for university-industry job relations in high tech fields. Many computer businesses and resulting computer products were the direct result of this. Certain cities during this time were slowly adjusting to a new, service based economy. In spite of this, New England proved to be some of the richest regions in America, and certain regions of the Maritimes were also incredibly rich.
Additionally, the Cold War saw a myriad of social changes in American and Canadian cultures. Civil rights, the sexual revolution, the Second Vatican Council due to the regions's large Catholic populace, and the political conflict between the American and Soviet Empires brought wide amounts of conflicts across the world. In now Cydalian territories, the most pressing issues were that of feminism and race-based civil rights. In Boston, the city experienced months of unrest due to school segregation and school bus segregation.
In 1963, many Blacks in New England joined civil rights movements regarding the status of Blacks, which they viewed as still being second class citizens subject to racism, though being removed from the more openly racist states in the Southern United States. Inspired by Civil Rights movements from the south, Black Bostonians and New Englanders used mass demonstrations and nonviolence to attempt to overcome racial differences. In the end, the protesters and anti-Segregationists won, and, despite it taking a while, Boston schools and school buses were desegregated.
During this time, the Republican Party in the United States began to shift politically from the left to the right, and began using the "solid south" as a political strategy. Due to this, New England switched from a Republican to a Democratic stronghold, mainly due to a large urban population and many liberal arts colleges and pro-liberal intelligentsia. Compared to other regions of America and Canada, New England and the Maritimes had a higher support of left wing variants of socialism and communism, with professor Noam Chomsky being a prime example.
Internet Era
After the collapse and fall of the Soviet Empire, the United States of America was left as the world's dominant, and only standing superpower. During Bill Clinton's presidency in the mid-1990s, American political discourse focused mostly on domestic issues. While the early 1990s saw the US economy mired in recession, a recovery began starting in 1994 and began accelerating thanks to a boom created by technology. The Internet and related technologies made their first broad penetrations into the economy, prompting a Wall Street technology-driven bubble, which Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan described in 1996 as "irrational exuberance". By 1998, the economy was booming and unemployment below 5%.
The United States was the world's dominant military power and it's puppet Japan, sometimes seen as the largest economic rival to the U.S., was caught in a period of stagnation. China was emerging as the U.S.'s foremost trading competitor in more and more areas. Localized conflicts such as those in Haiti and the Balkans prompted President Clinton to send in U.S. troops as peacekeepers to disastrous results, reviving the Cold-War-era controversy about whether policing the rest of the world was a proper U.S. role. Meanwhile, Islamic radicals overseas, mainly in the Levant and Africa, loudly threatened assaults against the U.S. for its ongoing military presence in the Levant, and even staged the first World Trade Center attack, a truck bombing in New York's twin towers, in 1993, as well as a number of deadly attacks on U.S. interests abroad.
Immigration, mainly from Latin America and Asia, swelled during the 1990s, laying the groundwork for disastrous changes in the demographic makeup of the U.S. population in coming decades, such as Hispanics replacing African-Americans as the largest minority. Cydalia, however, managed to avoid most of these factors due to geographic factors. Despite tougher border scrutiny after the September 11 attacks, nearly 8 million immigrants came to the United States from 2000 to 2005—more than in any other five-year period in the nation's history. Almost half entered illegally.
Additionally, the United States continued to grow both domestically and abroad in influence until the 2008 recession. Despite this, on the morning of September 11, 2001, four airliners were hijacked by 19 members of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. This is generally considered to be the first major moment in the fall of the American Empire. The first hijacked airliner struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 A.M. in New York City; with a second striking the South Tower less than twenty minutes later at 9:03 A.M., resulting in the collapse of both 110 story skyscrapers, and the destruction of the World Trade Center. The third hijacked plane, was crashed into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense) in Arlington County, Virginia, demolishing a section of the outer southwest facing wall. After discovering that their plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was going to be used as a missile, passengers attempted to regain control of the plane which had been redirected towards Washington, D.C. However, after regaining control from the hijackers, the plane crashed near a rural community near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In total, the attacks killed 2,996 people—2,507 civilians, 343 firefighters, 72 law enforcement officers, 55 military personnel, and the 19 terrorists. The 9/11 attack was the single deadliest international terrorist incident and the most devastating foreign attack on American soil since the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It refocused American attention to a long war on terrorism, beginning with an attack on al-Qaeda and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan.
After the September 11th attacks, the American Empire played directly into the hand of al-Qaeda's strategy, which was to essentially bleed the United States dry and cause civil strife and unrest at home. Over the next 30 years, the United States would continue to do this, getting involved in numerous Levantine and African conflicts. Additionally, the American Empire soon found it's massive, globalized world economy found itself under much stress due to a massive recession in 2008. The Great Recession stemmed from the collapse of the American real-estate market in relation to the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2008 and the American subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 to 2009, though policies of other nations contributed as well. According to the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (the official arbiter of U.S. recessions), the recession in the U.S. began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, thus extending over 19 months. The Great Recession resulted in a scarcity of valuable assets in the market economy and the collapse of the financial sector (banks) in the world economy; some banks were bailed out by the U.S. federal government.
Over the next decade, a mix of poor recession management alongside a continuation of foreign interventions in the Levant, Asia, and Africa began to show the wear and tear on American society. With the general populace becoming more and more distrustful of the ruling elite and the system put in place, the election of Donald Trump into the Presidency of the American Empire in 2016 was a very big upset for the system in place. The Trump government was met with incredibly mixed results at the time, due to in part, both Donald Trump's volatile personality and his populist conservative and capitalist beliefs. The 2016 presidential campaign was, according to historians, one of the "dirtiest" campaigns in American history, not seen since the elections of 1828 or 1964. During the election, the internet played a large role, with many disenfranchised and politically "angry" or nihilistic people, mainly young white men, giving Donald Trump free press, making memes in support of his campaign and additionally slandering his opponents in both the Republican and Democrat parties. During his administration, Trump proved to be much like past presidents. He did not live up to many of his social and policy promises. In the eyes of many Americans on both the right and the left, Trump may have fixed a capitalist economy, but he still got the Empire into foreign wars. He deployed United States troops to Syria and, in late 2019 and 2020, Iraq after a long series of proxy conflicts with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Trump government faced many scandals regarding other nations such as Russia and Ukraine, which led to an impeachment hearing over foreign interference in the 2016 election and political meddling in the 2020 election, and the government also got America involved in the internal issues of other nations, such as Venezuela and Bolivia.
From the left, Donald Trump was criticized for actions such as a "Muslim Ban" regarding immigration alongside comments on women and minorities. From the right, Trump was also criticized for his defense of Israel and pandering to certain minorities. From the center, Trump was criticized mainly for being "mean." Trump would go on to lose the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Biden would die in 2024 on the re-election campaign trail, leaving the campaign and subsequent terms to his Vice President, Pete Buttigieg.
Second American Civil War
In 2028, the American political scene had devolved into two radically opposed groups: the liberal Democrat majority and the conservative Republican minority. After the impeachment and subsequent loss of Donald Trump to Joe Biden in 2020, American society saw a rapid change both in values and in demographics. While most of the original details are still considered fuzzy by most scholars, most agree that the situation was somewhat inevitable, with the 2008 recession and the political ramifications of it in the years later causing an environment perfect for civil strife.
The Second American Civil War started on July 4th, 2029, about a week after protesters and counter-protesters clashed in the streets of Seattle, Washington. After 12 years, various far-right groups in the United States held a second "Unite the Right" rally in Seattle's downtown on June 27th, despite a ban from the city council. Met with resistance from far-left counter-protesters and Antifa, after about an hour of street fighting, police that were called in to manage the situation were fired upon with military grade assault weaponry, resulting in the deaths of five officers. While it is unknown which side began to fire upon the Seattle Police Department first, be it far-right, far-left, or an independent actor, the resulting chaos caused a three-way battle between the far-right militias, far-left militias, and the Seattle Police Department. In the aftermath, around 200 people, including 77 civilians, died.
On July 4th, 2029, various factions of the United States military -- around two-thirds of it -- alongside various lone-wolves and far-right militias mobilized by social media, rose up across the nation. Most of the American Midwest, Rockies, Appalachia, and South joined the cause as well. Montana, Idaho, and Alaska gave unilateral declarations of support for the nationalist movement. As for the Federal Government in Washington, it was mainly supported by New England, the Mid-Atlantic, California and the rest of the West Coast, Florida, Hawaii, the areas surrounding the capitols, and the mayors of various cities such as Chicago and Denver both voiced their support for the Federal Government. Foreign responses depended heavily on the country, though most of the American Empire's proxies, namely those in NATO, supported the Federal Government. Within days, various far left forces rose up in response, mainly in cities, California, Chicago, New York, and rural areas of New England.
Within days, far-right militias, believed to be from the group known as "Atomwaffen," had taken down both the eastern and western power grids of the United States. The resulting lack of communications effectively split every major faction into hordes of smaller armed groups and militias fighting both each other and local government forces. The only grid that was not taken down was the Texan INTERCOT Power Grid, which was attacked two weeks later on July 20th, but Atomwaffen militiamen were routed by Texas National Guard troops. Backup generators proved to only be semi-effective, and it is estimated that during this time, even with government and foreign aid, over a million civilians -- mainly those in hospitals -- died from lack of power.
Communications proved to be a massive issue during the early stages of the war due to the lack of electricity. With the internet and most other forms of mass communication down, both right and left wing militias fired on each other, and Federal Government units had issues discerning friendly from enemy soldiers. One prime example of this was the Battle of Kingsport, in which Federal Government forces attacked a mobilized division of Tennessee National Guard soldiers who they believed to be members of either an America First or Christian Identity Militia. Kingsport was shelled by Federal Artillery, resulting in the death of around 9,000 to 11,000 civilians alongside half of the Tennessee National Guard soldiers defending the city. In the wake of the battle, around 40% of the Federal Troops deserted the army over the next month, and most of the officers in charge of the battle were fragged by their own troops. The state government of Tennessee declared unilateral support for the America First movement, which in turn caused anarchist militias to storm police stations in Nashville and attempt to take the city over. They would be beaten back by a mix of Tennessee National Guard, America First, and National Socialist Movement militiamen.
Over the next few months as power was restored and battles began to be fought, four main sides in the conflict began to emerge. These would be the Right Wing forces, which included the Gilead Compact, America First, Identitarians, Traditionalists, White Nationalists, Paleoconservatives, Libertarians, and various forms of Fascists. Their beliefs ranged anywhere from Paleoconservatism to various forms of Religious Fundamentalism and Neo-Nazism. The left wing forces that arose in response to them included the CPUSA, "Antifa," DSA, and a wide variety of sectarian Socialist, Communist, and Anarchist movements. The Federal government maintained the majority of centrist Republicans and centre-left Democrats. The remaining side was essentially a mix of local militias determined more on defending their homes than anything else, though the term "fourth side" can also apply to various Anarcho-Primitivist movements such as the Stars or Kaczynskists.
What became Cydalia was still divided up into the Canadian territories, the Maritimes; and the American territories, or New England. New England was, at the beginning of the war, all states in New England declared unilateral support for the Federal Government, and the Government of Canada additionally declared support for the Federal Government. While the Federal Government slowly got pushed out of California, the Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest, the Federal Government began to fortify the mid-Atlantic and New England as Canada was swarmed with refugees from the United States.
The war would continue until 2036 with varying levels of intensity. After the Peace of Des Moines, the Federal Government fell into anarchy and held territory within only coastal New England and within a 150 mile radius of Washington D.C.
The Great Climate Collapse
With America having been essentially destroyed during the Second American Civil War, any hope at an American and Western-led environmental stoppage had been completely destroyed as Canada and the European Union devolved into isolation. With most pollution being made in China, Africa, and India, most political and economic leverages against them for climate change were also destroyed. Over the next few decades, with the exception of China and India, the world would continue to pollute at a slightly higher rate compared to the past few decades.
Due to the lack of America as a global power and the EU proving generally powerless to stop them due to domestic issues, both the Republic of India and the Peoples' Republic of China sought to replace the United States and Europe as the dominant world powers. Even before the Second American Civil War, India and China had been increasing production of essentially everything they could, from domestic consumer products to military arms. Due to this arms race between the two powers, the amount of pollution that they -- already the main polluters -- put into the atmosphere increased dramatically. Without the political or economic leverage of the West to contain them, the amount of carbon put into the atmosphere caused significant damage to the planet, speeding up climate change for a time.
Lack of resources, combined with social strife and a constantly worsening climate caused, in most places, a partial collapse of society. In places such as the Levant, India, and parts of Latin America and Africa -- a complete collapse of the then-current social order.
Terrorist groups, both on the far left and far right, took up the mantle of environmentalism and began staging attacks on places all around the world. The most important attack was carried out by the AnPrRF (Anarcho-Primitivist Revolutionary Front, commonly called the "Stars" due to their usage of Patrick Star as a mascot) on the 15th April of 2049, in which using stolen nuclear weaponry from the United States and Pakistan, the Yellowstone National Park was bombed in such a way that caused the Yellowstone Supervolcano to erupt, causing billions of deaths and centuries of damage on a global scale. Ironically enough, an eruption of such a magnitude is widely regarded by most climate scientists to have put a pause on global climate change feedback loops, essentially saving humanity from a runaway greenhouse effect.
New Dark Ages
Immediately after the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the world was plunged into a mixture of nuclear and volcanic winter. Temperatures across the planet cooled off, and the melting of the ice caps stopped completely, and in a few places, even receded. Billions died across the globe, mainly due to the ensuing nuclear winter causing famines. In modern Bharat and Zhongguo, the same anarco-primitivist movement responsible for the nuclear detonations at the Yellowstone National Park caused a nuclear exchange between the Republic of India, the Republic of Pakistan, and the Peoples' Republic of China, which caused roughly 200 million deaths in the first 3 hours of the conflict.
In the United States and Canada, the majority of the continent was under some form of ash cover that stretched from sea to sea. Most of Cydalia was dusted with a light coating of under half an inch of ash and dust. Closer to the volcano, especially in areas of modern day Deseret and Colorado, up to 40 feet of ash cover was common. The main issue, however, laid in the usage of nuclear weapons alongside the volcano. While certainly not responsible for the causation of most of the deaths and long-lasting medical issues for the survivors, it is widely regarded by scientists that some of the ash put out by the eruption was certainly radioactive. This is generally backed up by statistics showing non-respiratory forms of cancer increasing worldwide for the next 150 years, though lung cancer was the most common form of cancer developed, especially in Merica.
Within Cydalia, the effects felt by this was fast. The newly established Provisional Government of New England and the Maritimes, which already had a tenuous hold over the region, essentially collapsed overnight.
- temperatures dipped
-nuclear winter
-not fun
Neo-Renaissance
Re-Industrial Era
Modern History
The "modern" period of Cydalian history covers the time after the Ceasefire of 2231. In the wake of the Merican Skirmishes, Cydalia, and especially it's frontiers, were given ample time to rebuild as the nation recovered from the mutual destruction brought upon it by neighboring nations, and Cydalia's neighbors were able to recover from blows given to them by Cydalia.
Starting with a "9 Year Plan" in 2231 during the months leading up to the Ceasefire, King Gerald I elected to re-vitalize the damaged Cydalian infrastructure via massive public works projects with extensive use of automation to compensate for the lack of manpower available. Over the course of the first nine years, from 2231 to 2240, Cydalia gradually rebuilt itself, starting from the outskirts of Qadia, Deitschland, and Scosha and gradually worked inwards where there was less damage. The first three years of the plan dealt with gross war damage to major cities and border regions, and cities like Sherbrooke, Saint-Quentin, and Halafacsur were almost completely rebuilt from the ground up. Prewar city plans were drawn up in an attempt to restore as much of the original cities as possible, though the worst affected regions, such as around Saint-Quentin, had to construct mostly new buildings. Today, around 70% of all buildings in Saint-Quentin were built after 2235. The next three years of the plan, from 2234-2237, dealt with revitalizing the overall infrastructure of the nation. Roads, railways, harbors, and subways were built in all major cities and gradually expanded outwards into more rural areas. Though Phase II of the plan began in 2234, most transport systems weren't fully completed until 2240 itself, and a few more isolated areas weren't linked until early 2242. The third phase of the plan was dedicated to "finally fixing the populace." Given six years to already recover, the years of 2237-2240 were dedicated to boosting Cydalia's depleted population and damaged environment.
Phase III consisted of government incentives and propaganda dedicated to encouraging families to have children, and for Cydalians who were currently in the process of dating to get married and to start having children. Around this time, the overall birthrate of Cydalia doubled in most places, and in a few areas, tripled or even quadrupled, though the more extreme outliers quickly diminished. The amount of children in Cydalia's school system put considerable strain on the education system, leading to the government allowing homeschooling in certain areas, mainly urban areas. Where possible, children from urban communities were sent to schools in suburban and rural communities.
With the population issue being solved, the environment could be focused on. Trees were replanted in war-torn zones, with roughly 125 million trees being planted over the course of the next decade. Hydroponics facilities were built in urban areas in an attempt to provide both food for the populace at large and so that trees could begin to be replanted down the line. Efforts to both preserve and restore different biomes across the nation increased exponentially, and to great success.
In addition to King Gerald's efforts, many don't ignore the contributions that Pahlament Speaker Jonathan Cromey had on getting the motions approved by Pahlament, and his effects on motivating the populace alongside his work with King Gerald. Jonathan Comey would die in office in 2244, leaving him the longest serving Pahlament Speaker in Cydalian history, from 2219 until 2244, a total of 25 years.
To this day, the 2230s and 2240s are regarded as some of the most industrious decades in Cydalia. With the advent of the 2250s, the strains on Cydalia's education and medical syndicates began to wane, and by the 2260s, with most of the post war boom babies being adults -- Cydalia set out on making the best out of a world where nations would, until further notice, attempt to ignore one another. King Gerald I died in 2262, leaving King Eliab I in his stead. Pahlamentary appointments under King Eliab proved to be somewhat unsuccessful at first, with the first Speaker appointed by him, Lewis Gryf, dying in a boating accident before being able to implement any meaningful policy. His second appointment, Cydalia's first Steadfast Speaker, Godwinn Cao, proved to be successful in both implementing policy and in helping King Eliab with expanding Cydalia's horizons.
Also of note was the efforts of King Gerald I to restructure the Cydalian government in the wake of the warring. During his reign, the government became much more centralized and less "elitist." Most notably was the change in personality from Kings Gerald to Eliab. Gerald spent most of his childhood raised in and around the Cydalian government and was brought up mainly around government and military advisors. Due to wars causing security and personnel concerns, King Eliab was brought up around the average Cydalian populace, forgoing tutors for the public education system. Being seen as much more of a "Common Man" while still being King was seen as something respectable by the populace, who found Eliab's more "down to Earth" personality and contempt of elitisms alongside a more working class group of friends and confidants being met with praise by most people. Because of this, Kings since Eliab have been raised in a similar way.
While most nations in Merica, in accordance with the Ceasefire, attempted to either begrudgingly get along or attempted to ignore each other all together, Cydalia decided to set its sights outside of Merica, and it began to develop foreign relations with Europans, Africans, Suramerican, and Ceanian powers. While trade proved limited as always, Cydalia began to solidify the new Merican order as one meant to last for the time being by interacting with other powers in a positive way. Over the 2260s, media and Cydalian culture as a whole had a golden age, with movies, video games, television, books, and philosophy developing. Cydalia's government, during this time, established permanent relations with major Europan powers such as France, Deutschland, Nederland, the EC, and Iberia. In Afrika, Cydalia found a fast friend and ally in Sénégambie and another in the East African Commonwealth. King Eliab I would visit Afrika, being the first Cydalian to do so. During his time in Afrika, he would help smooth out a political crisis between the EAC and Ityop'p'ya, leading to a relatively positive view of Cydalians in West Afrika and East Afrika. Attempts at establishing relations with the ultranationalist and ethnonationalist South Afrikan states proved less than fruitful. The Boerstaat and Kleurlingstaat turned down any diplomatic relations, and, due to being almost completely cut off on the continent, any diplomacy with the Zulu proved relatively useless.
King Eliab would establish friendly relations with the Ērānshahr and the Marāṭhā Saṅgharājya. Attempts at formalizing relations with Zion would be ignored until King Franklin II did so in 2284. In Europa, all previously mentioned nations were visited, and Cydalia established especially warm relations with the EC and Iberia. With relations warming up between Cydalia and other states, King Eliab would return to to the homeland after roughly a year and a half travelling the world.
Cydalian media exploded, with many modern day film and television classics being created. The Algonquian language "western," Kwaskwai Paskwak (Exactly at Noon) was released in theaters and streaming services in 2268, and is regarded by many today as the best film to come out of Cydalia in it's history.
Heavy religious influence in the media was common, and the Cydalian government made sure that both the church and itself were present. Pro-Cydalian messaging was common, and many movies featured Cydalians as "keepers of the peace." Throughout the late 2260s and 2270s, this same message was felt within the populace as a whole, and crime rates dropped significantly. The 2270s as a decade are generally regarded as rather uneventful, even on the homefront. The first half of the decade passed relatively uneventfully. The second half of the decade saw a period of anomalous weather events, mainly due to bad timing of natural disasters. In 2276, Huaynaputina, a stratovolcano in Tawantinsuyu erupted in late August, causing the ensuing winter to be brutal for many within the northern hemisphere. Temperatures plummeted to points below even pre-Industrial era lows in certain places. While the damage in Suramerica and more specifically in Tawantinsuyu and in Bowuliwya, the winter of 2276-2277 resulted in long lasting cold spells, even causing ice to coat most of the Quabbin and Hudson Seas, and many islands in Scosha were linked together by ice bridges. The following spring, a La Niña developed on the coast offshore of the Tawantinsuyu, resulting in increased rainfall and snowfall for months in the northern hemisphere. Cydalia's spring was nonexistent, and when summer came, it was marked by heavy rainfall and floods. The fall harvest was recorded as "abysmal," leading for Cydalia to break out official food stores for the first time since 2243. Cydalia spent the rest of the year relying primarily on hydroponics and international trade to make up for losses. The mutual aid given to and received by other nations in Merica didn't go unnoticed by politicians on the continent, and the Huaynaputina eruption is generally regarded as the main catalyst for the eventual formation of the Merican Union.
King Eliab would die on December 15th, 2284, and he would succeeded by his oldest son, Franklin II. The early years of King Franklin II's reign were generally about agricultural revitalization, and achieving full autarky when it came to food production within Cydalia even outside of staple foods. In a unique case, the leader of the Farming and Agricultural Syndicate was overlooked for a position of speaker, and the first "dictatorial" appointment of a Speaker of Pahlament was made, given to Samuel Sieweczki, a run-of-the-mill farmer from eastern Pioneer. The term "dictatorial" in this case is meant in a similar style to ancient Rome, where a leader with the right set of skills would be appointed, and after the problem at hand was solved, said dictator would willingly step down. Speaker Sieweczski is commonly regarded as doing a great job for what was needed in fixing the nation's agriculture, and willingly stepped down after two years of being speaker.
The rest of the decade would be marred by social changes resulting in a brief heresy in Upstate that resulted in Catholic Church officials being called in to fix the situation. Eventually, by 2290, the issues were resolved. The biggest turning point of the 2290s, however, is widely regarded as the development of the Merican Union. Inspired by the amount of cooperation that different Merician nations showed one another during the Huaynaputina eruption and it's aftermath, King Franklin II began covert negotiations with neighboring nations and Merican nations with similar values and governments such as Alaska and California. Over the course of the next few years, negotiations expanded more and more, and the Merican Union was founded at the end of the century. The founding nations were Cydalia, Federalia, Marval, Québec, Rontroit, the NCR, Canada, the État Michif, Nunavut, Minasota, California, Alaska, and Dinétah.
With the beginning of the 2300s, the Merican Union, which was initially seen as a loose alliance of nations that agreed to continue not only the Ceasefire's promise of not attacking one another, but to additionally aid each other when possible, began to slowly expand. By 2305, Chicagoland, Athabasca, and the Tlingit-Xaayda Union had joined. The following years, Erie and Cascadia did as well. By 2310, most nations in Merica had joined, with the final addition, the Lakotah, joining in 2315.
King Franklin II resigned in late 2319 due to health reasons, being the first Cydalian King to do so. His eldest and only son, Planter I, took over as King within a week, and is the current King of Cydalia. Under Planter's rule, Cydalia has taken a leading role in the Merican Union, and due to increasing tensions with the DPEK and the Rijk, Planter's reign has seen the development of the MU from a mutual aid agreement to a fully fledged military alliance from shore to shore of the Merican continent.
Geography
Cydalia is one of the largest nations in Merica, being ##### square kilometers in area. It is only eclipsed by the Empires of Alaska and California, alongside Kalaallit Nunaat.
Much like how pre-Collapse Massachusetts was referred to as the "Bay State," Cydalia is generally given the nickname of "Bay Country" or sometimes "Bayland" by those inhabiting it. Cydalia, despite it's large inland territories, is almost completely surrounded by coastline. To the north of Cydalia is the Saint Lawrence and the Erie Seas, to the west is the Bay of Bundy, and to the south and southwest is the Atlantic Ocean. Additionally, two major bays and one minor bay occupy a good amount of territory within Cydalia -- the Awlbany Bay, Connecticut Bay, and the Providence Bay, respectively.
Cydalia is known for it's rather slim variation in land. Cydalia has only a few mountain ranges, the most notable of them being the Appalachian mountain range in the center of Cydalia. Between coasts and mountain ranges, most of Cydalia is comprised of an almost never ending stretch of plains, valleys, and hills.
Many pre-Collapse streams and smaller rivers have become major rivers in Cydalia, just as the major rivers of the past (such as the Hudson and the Connecticut) flooded and formed the Awlbany and Connecticut Bays. Cydalia's biggest rivers include the Merrimack, Blackstone, Penobscot, St. John, Oswego, and the Susquehanna. Rivers form an important part of internal and external trade in Cydalia, and river ferries are a common sight in Cydalia.
Cydalia's highest point is Mount Agiocochook, sometimes referred to the more archaic pre-Collapse name of "Mount Washington." Cydalia's mountain ranges go down most of the center and northeast of the nation, going diagonally down towards wildlands, Appalachia, and Federalia. The largest mountain range in the nation are the Appalachians, followed by the White Mountains and the Catskills. Another important range is the Taconic Mountain Range in central Cydalia, which became the home to thousands of climate refugees.
Mount Agiocochook, Green-White Mountain District.
- Greylock.jpeg
Mount Greylock, one of the most visited mountains in the Berkshires/Taconic ranges.
The coastline of southern Piscataquis at dawn.
A winter shot of Lake Erie from a beach in Haudenosaunee.
Marshes are a common feature of the coasts of Central Cydalia, especially in Providence, Massachusetts, and Pioneer.
Mountainous coastlines are common in Northern and Northeastern Cydalia.
Qadia is generally considered to be one large woodland with flatter, more open spaces towards the coast.
Upstate is generally considered to be the "second breadbasket" of Cydalia despite rocky soil. Farms dot the landscape in high density towards borders with other Districts.
Population wise, Cydalia's 20.1 million population is generally located by the coastlines. Inland, small towns are common, with the average Cydalian village/town having about 900 to 1,600 inhabitants. Towns in the more populated center of Cydalia have higher populations. The Districts with the five highest population densities are the Pioneer, Capitol, Providence, Green-White Mountain, and Deitsland Districts.
Climate
The climate of Cydalia is overwhelmingly temperate. Despite the initial Collapse, the eruption of Yellowstone somewhat reset the seasonal disruptions. Cydalia has four seasons; spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Springs in Cydalia see snow melt and the temperature get progressively warmer until May and early June, when the nation tends to get bombarded with storms and humidity until a dry heat takes over for most of the summer. During this time, summers are generally sunny, with most precipitation coming through cold fronts that pass through on average once every one to two weeks, or scattered thunderstorms. Summers across Cydalia are warm and sometimes even considered hot. Fall sees the temperature of the nation drop slowly, and the forests of Cydalia generally light up around mid-September to early October with a variety of colors, something for which Cydalia is internationally renowned for. Cydalia's tight travel policy for foreigners is lifted for about a month around this time, where groups of foreign tourists, aptly named "leafas," visit the nation for up to two weeks at a time. Winters are cold, with below freezing temperatures being common again.In years affected by El Niño, Cydalia's winters tend to be warmer than average, and follow a repeating weather pattern: massive snow squalls affect regions of the nation every one to two months, and the time between the squalls has increasing warmth until most of the snow is melted. This repeats until the end of the winter season.
Precipitation is spread evenly throughout the year in Cydalia. Precipitation and temperature variations occur less frequently over the coast, due to the relative lack of convection over the cooler ocean waters.
Severe weather outside of strong wind gusts are rare in Cydalia.
Environment
Politics
Government
According to the Cydalian Constitution, the government of Cydalia is a "semi-constitutional Monarchy" that takes "influence from the philosophies of Falangism, Integralism, Reactionary thought, Roman Catholic belief, and pre-Collapse American Paleoconservatism."
For all intents and purposes, the King is both the head of state and government. Decisions are, to a large extent, made on the basis of consultation among the senior princes of the royal family, trusted military and political advisers, and the religious establishment. The King oversees sessions of Pahlament, and frequently intervenes in the lawmaking process when needed to. The appointed head of Pahlament, who doubles as speaker, is Colonel David Zekara. Essentially, the King is meant to be the "final and only" official vote regarding all political issues in Cydalia. While Pahlament is essentially a "public opinion" poll alongside being a group of advisers to the King, throughout Cydalian history, every King has basically affirmed almost everything Pahlament has passed without objection.
Compared to most post-American states, there is little democracy in Cydalia. What little voting there is is typically on the local level, where the age old New England tradition of meetinghouses and town meetings as a form of direct or semi-direct democracy are still run to this day. District and national issues are left to District Lords, with few exceptions being left up to popular ballot. Democratic voting in Cydalia is always direct and never representative when on ballot. Members of Pahlament are voted to be representatives of their constituency, and are voted in by the same direct democratic system..
Voting in general is restricted to landed men over the age of 25, soldiers over the age of 21 who pass a test if not landed, and national labor corps members over the age of 23 if they pass the same test as well. Women are not allowed to vote, and voting only generally affects the upper house of Pahlament. The lower house of Pahlament is appointed directly by the King to serve as representatives of public opinion.
Most parties are banned in Cydalia. This is rarely due to political opposition from the established crown, but rather the belief that political parties cause partisanship and division within a populace. The leading party, CFIP, is generally considered to be the "only legal party" in Cydalia when this is not the case. Minor parties are allowed, but for any of them to have a meaningful number of members is incredibly rare.
The King generally rules with "absolute power", and the first male heir takes over the crown on the death of the previous ruler. The current King, Planter Dogood, took after King Franklin II on 18 October 2319, and a coronation followed on October 20th of the same year. King Franklin II abdicated in favor of his son Planter due to health reasons, the first King to do so.
The Government operates on a "fully transparent" basis, with all sessions of Pahlament shown on television and also livestreamed online. Additionally, all government ministers are required to wear recording wires when doing work. The reason for doing so is due to a popular belief that the main reason why many pre-Collapse nations, such as America and the Soviet Union, became corrupt due to a lack of transparency.
To assist with a positive image, the King runs livestreams, charity events, and maintains a twitter account on the neonet, and King Planter is generally believed to be one of the more entertaining figures on neonet twitter. King Planter is a popular figure in Cydalia, and is generally liked very much by the populace, especially with younger generations.
Foreign Relations and Military
Worldwide, Cydalia is seen as a regional power, at least militarily. Socially and politically, Cydalia is one of the premiere powers in the world, and the rise of far-right politics in what was New England is generally seen as the "solidification" of the current state of world affairs in a political sense. Originally pertaining only to Merica, the trend expanded eastwards to Europa, and southwards to Suramerica and Afrika. Within a century, it had spread to Ceania and Asia.
On the Merican continent, Cydalia is widely regarded to be the most powerful nation on the eastern seaboard, with only Federalia coming up as a close second. Close Cydalian allies include, but are not limited to, the Québécois State, Newfinlan, Federalia, California, Alaska, the NCR, the Duchy of Marval, Sénégambie, the Iberian Union and the Europan Confederacy. The nation also has friendly relations with Persia and the Marathan Confederacy. Cydalia was a founding member of both the International Forum for Dialogue and the Merican Union. Furthermore, it has membership in various other international and regional organizations and forums for defensive and cultural affairs.
Cydalia has only three land borders with other countries. These are with Marval, Federalia, and Erie. Despite all nations being member states of the Merican Union, all borders have substantial defenses in case of attacks. Cydalia has tightly controlled maritime borders with Rontroit, the Québécois State, Newfinland, and Canada. The only physical bridge between any of these is between Rontroit and Cydalia, the Buffalo Bridge, which is jointly controlled by both sides.
Between the land borders of Erie and Federalia, Cydalia has a tightly controlled frontier border. Despite the military presence, it frequently experiences raids by wildmen, and as is the case with many other Merican nations that have a frontier border, Cydalian forces commonly use these raids and counter-incursions into wildmen territory as practice and to ensure that the Cydalian military is always experiencing some level of combat.
Cydalia maintains a professional military force of approximately 150,000 active and 55,000 reserve personnel. The Cydalian Defense Forces (CDF) comprise the Royal Cydalian Marines, Royal Cydalian Navy, and Royal Cydalian Air Force. The military of Cydalia is regarded to be one of the better militaries in Merica, with well trained and equipped soldiers. Cydalian infantry forces are trained in both conventional infantry and marine warfare schools, and after boot camp are allowed to join either a marine, mountaineer, or forest regiment. Within these, other common branches of infantry exist, such as light infantry, engineers, and military police.
The Royal Cydalian Navy, while not as powerful as the navy of neighboring Newfinland, is still an impressive force. The majority of its operations pertain to coastal defense and protecting Cydalian trade ships in international waters. Officially, it is tasked with providing security to Cydalian waters and Cydalian persons and ships in international waters abroad. Cydalian naval ships are generally reproductions of pre-Collapse American and Canadian war ships, with improvements and new technologies added throughout the years.
The Royal Cydalian Air Force is responsible for all aircraft operations of the Cydalian military on paper, although in a de facto sense it doesn't really exist. Tasked with enforcing the security of Cydalian airspaces, all RCAF aircraft are divided up between the Cydalian Marine Corps and the Cydalian Navy, with aircraft switching off depending on which branch needs more at the current time.
The Cydalian military is one of the largest contributors to the MUCA, or the Merican Union Combined Army. Generally used for peacekeeping operations in wildmen territory bordering other nations, Cydalia has gained a reputation alongside nations like Federalia and Canada as being one of the more willing contributors to post-Ceasefire Merican peacekeeping. In recent years, due to escalating tensions with Korea, an increasing number of Cydalian and MUCA forces have been deployed to west coast nations such as Athabaska, Alaska, the Lingít-X̱aayda Tl’átk, Cascadia, and Oregunju. The largest Cascadian base is located in what was Verdi, Nevada. It is shared by soldiers from Cydalia, Deseret, New Afrika, and Marval. The deployment of soldiers to foreign soldiers has faced heavy criticism from more isolationist elements within Cydalia.
Administrative Divisions
Cydalia is divided up into 18 divisions, each called Districts. Every District is, in turn, part of a regional coalition of District governments. These regional coalitions are expected to work together for the benefit of all in their region. Each District is ruled by a Lord, appointed by the King for life. Each District Lord is eligible to become the Duke of a region, and the process to select said Duke is put forward by the Speaker of Pahlament and is approved by the King.
Note: Regional Dukes are in bold.
Demographics
According to the 2319 Cydalian census, Cydalia had a population of 20,165,201, of which 49.7% were male and 50.3% were female. Approximately 22.2% of the population were under 18 years of age; 6.5% were over 65 years of age.
In terms of race and ethnicity, ethnic Cydalians made up 77.1% of Cydalia's population. Black Cydalians composed 4.3% of the region's population. White minorities, namely Deitsch, Qadians, and Scoshuns made up 7.8%, 3.7%, and 2.0% of the population, respectively. Other ethnic groups, such as natives, comprise about 3.2% of the population. Within this group, Algonquians in the east comprise 1.2% of the total populace, and Iroquoians in the west comprise about 2.0%.
In addition to this, 1.8% of the total populace is considered "Steadfast," meaning that they are the descendants of subcontinental Indians, Asians, or Hispanic immigrants who lived in the area prior to collapse. While most Hispanics fled south, and while most Indians and Asians fled west, those who stayed in what is now Cydalia were treated with some respect by the initial Cydalian government, which had much stricter racial policies at it's founding. Though they were quickly lifted, the Steadfasts were seen as "model minorities," as most of them had come from either working class families -- in the case of Hispanics -- or from doctors, engineers, and college intelligentsia, in the case of Asians and Indians. Seen by the government as willing to contribute to the new nation, they were saved from deportation. The Steadfast population of Cydalia is marked in the census by various designations depending on the racial identity of said person, with "SF-H" being used for Hispanics, "SF-A" for Asians, and "SF-I" for Indians. "Other" consists of the remaining .1% of the population, and it applies to immigrants and extremely small numbers of ethnic minorities.
Most ethnic Cydalians can trace their ancestry back to European settlers of English, Polish, Lithuanian, German, Irish, Italian, French, and Portuguese origins, alongside Brazilians. Black Cydalians are descendants of Black Americans and African immigrants. Deitsch, Qadian, and Scoshuns are the descendants of Pennsylvania Dutch speaking Amish people, Acadians, and Gaelic inhabitants of Nova Scotia respectively.
Languages
Cydalia has six official languages. Legally, each of the six languages are held in equal regard, though in reality, Cydalian is the one most commonly used, spoken by almost all the population in some way, with around 83.3% of the population speaking Cydalian as a primary language at home.
Cydalian is, technically, a dialect of English that has been solidified into it's own language. Based on the evolution of the famous pre-Collapse "Bostonian" accent, Cydalian is notable for it's "r-dropping" and changing of -ing noises to -in noises. Whether this evolution was forced by nationalistic and regionalistic political policies, or if it came about naturally, is unknown.
Additional languages include: Scoshun, which is the evolution of the Scots and Irish Gaelic dialects spoken in Nova Scotia.
The Qadian language is a Francophone language spoken in the rural areas of northern Cydalia, and along the coastline of St. Lawrence fishing villages and those on the coast of the Bay of Fundy.
The Deitsch language is spoken in the far south of Cydalia, mainly by the Amish. It is a Germanic language, much like Cydalian, though it is much closer to forms of lower German than forms of English, despite heavy influence from it.
In addition to the languages above, which are descended from various Indo-European languages, two of Cydalia's six official languages are native reconstructions. These are Iroquoian, more found in the west of the nation, and Algonquian, found in the east. Due to the two languages' original component languages such as Mohawk and Seneca for Iroquoian, and Massachusett and Abenaki for Algonquian being mostly moribund by the time of the Collapse, what little speakers the languages had post-Collapse were put into mandatory linguistic schools by the Cydalian government starting in 2210, after various native scholars spent a few years developing each language.
| English | Cydalian | Qadian | Deitsch | Scoshun | Iroquoian | Algonquian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hello! | Hello! | Bonjure! | Hallo! | Haelo! | Segon! | Kway! |
| How are you? | Howah ya? | Commen allétu? | Vie bisht du? | Chiahmar a ta tu? | Sgennen gówa genh ontiatenro shón'a? | Dony gedowyozyn? |
| I'm good, thanks. | I'm wicked, ya? | Je vé bien, mersi. | Ich bin goot, danky. | Tami math, taing. | Ioianerátie! | Newowlowzy, ny dony gya? |
| My name is... | Ma'nam is... | Je m'app... | Ich bin/Ich binn... | Is e m 'ainm... | ...ióntiats. | ...nya. |
| Goodbye! | Seya! | Aurevoi! | Gootbei! | Marsinleat! | Ó'nen! | Adyo! |
Religion
Cydalia's state religion is Roman Catholocism, although noticeable influences from Cydalia's Protestant-Puritan past are evident. All other religions are banned by the state, and Cydalia is an active promoter of the Catholic faith on the Merican continent.
Prior to the Collapse, what is now Cydalia went through phases of religiosity and atheistic tendencies. Prior to the arrival of European colonists, most of the native populace followed their individual tribal religions, though this changed with the introduction of Christianity. The first Bible published and printed in Cydalia in it's history was in the now extinct Massachusett language by John Eliot, and was called the Eliot Indian Bible, or the Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God.
Most of what is Cydalia was originally Protestant, specifically Puritan. Religious minorities existed, and were generally Catholic, Native Religions, or other branches of Protestant Christianity. Small groups of Jews existed via immigration, and due to the slave trade, a small number of African Muslims also lived in British North America.
The hold of religion would wax and wane throughout history, with the First Great Awakening starting in Western Massachusetts and Northern Connecticut. Due to immigration, what was New England spent a long period of time being the most Catholic region in America, by percentage and by amount of practicing Catholics. Afterwards, starting during the middle of the 20th century, the influence of religion in what is now Cydalia slowly lost its grip on society, with most of central Cydalia being upwards of 25% atheist by the time of the Collapse.
The Deitsch community had always maintained a specific set of Mennonite-Protestant beliefs, and were known colloquially to the world as the "Amish." After Cydalia took over the Deitsch territories in Pennsylvania, the local Amish were made to convert, but were allowed to keep their unique culture and language, and were given substantial time to convert compared to other groups.
During and after the Collapse, religion took hold of Cydalia once more, with Catholicism -- promoted by Chicagoland and traditionalist Catholic factions ("tradcath") of the Gilead Compact -- becoming a common religion in the region, taking over Protestant forms of Christianity by 2100. Cydalia was formed as a Catholic nation, and promptly banned all other religious practices.
Cydalia has two patron saints, Saint Karl von Habsburg of Austria, and Saint Kateri "Catherine" Tekakwitha. Saint Karl was selected by the first Cydalian King, Harold I, as a representation of a model Catholic Monarch, and Saint Kateri was selected due to her being born in Cydalia, alongside being one of the first Catholic Saints in Merica.
Cydalia is divided up into 10 Roman Catholic Provinces, including 37 diocese, divided up from 5 archdiocese.
Immigration and Migration
As is the case with practically all other nations in Merica, immigration to and from Cydalia is practically unheard of on any scale whatsoever. Regarding a lack of immigration to the nation, this is due mainly in part to the "Organic Community" philosophy and policy of the country. Cydalia does not espouse ethnonationalism like some other Merican states, but believes that immigration in most numbers dilutes the overall culture of Cydalia, along minority cultures within the nation. This is generally believed to stem from paleoconservative policies from the era of the Second American Civil War. Within the past 25 years, 1,293 people, mainly wildmen, have immigrated to Cydalia and have been naturalized, mainly into the Deitsch and Cydalian communities further away from the border.
Emigration from Cydalia is likewise rare. This is due to a high quality of living, a high cultural assimilation rate, and because most neighboring Merican nations harbor similar policies regarding immigration. In the past 25 years, 491 people have emigrated, mainly to Cascadia, New Afrika, and Dinétah.
Cydalia maintains no official immigration office. A customs office is maintained and this is mainly for state officials and tourists that occasionally come into the country and state officials and tourists leaving the country on diplomatic visitations. Additionally, merchants leaving Cydalia to trade internationally must carry a passport with them at all times.
Health and Healthcare
Healthcare in Cydalia is delivered through a series of District based systems of publicly funded healthcare, generally called Medicare. As stated by the Cydalian Constitution, healthcare is a natural right for all Cydalian citizens regardless of, according to section three, "anything." According to polls, Cydalians generally believe universal healthcare is a fundamental value and a fundamental right for all those who choose to participate in society. Due to the economy not using money, medical supplies are pooled for the general populace in various hospitals throughout the nation. These include prescription drugs, physical trauma equipment such as casts and splints, eye care, dentistry, and occasionally more experimental treatments. Cydalia's overall healthcare follows the general model of post-Collapse nations, and it attempts to be more naturalistic at first before delving into more artificial ways of medicine and healing.
Pre-Collapse, New England had some of the best hospitals in the world, a trait that is still carried onto this day in Cydalia.
Due to increased trade in recent decades, more advanced systems of care have been built throughout Cydalian hospitals, boosting the overall quality of life. Due to friendly relations with scientifically advanced nations such as Rontroit and Antartída, the already advanced Cydalian healthcare system has helped discover cures for myriads of diseases. Through cooperation with Europan Confederacy and Antartídan scientists and researchers, a universal cure for most forms of cancer was discovered in 2256. A cure for rarer, prion based diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Familial Fatal Insomnia (FFI) was discovered via work with Rontroiti and Bod-pa scientists in 2268.
Both abortion and euthanasia are illegal, mainly due to the influence of the Catholic Church. Cydalia's government has an official "right to life" policy, which bans both abortion and euthanasia, and it additionally attempts to dissuade people from suicide. Cydalia's government runs an official suicide prevention hotline. In spite of this, Cydalia attempts to be rather eugenicist with how childbearing is handled. Anyone considered to have a major genetic disease is banned from having children. Additionally, the lowest 5% of the national IQ range is likewise banned from having children. Children that are born with disabilities such as physical birth defects, learning disabilities such as autism, or mental illnesses are not euthanized, though if a risk is perceived by healthcare professionals, it is generally discouraged.
While birth control in pill, hormonal, or implant forms are banned, the usage of methods such as condoms are not, though they are disapproved by more religious members of society and the Catholic Church.
Overall, most health statistics in Cydalia as of 2302 were at or above the GT10 baseline, though comparisons of a more explicit nature are complex. Life expectancy is very high, with the average life expectancy of 82.7 years total, with 84.4 years for women and 80.9 for men.
Drugs maintain an incredibly precarious position in Cydalia. Officially, all "hard drugs," such as heroin, cocaine, and meth are banned though the enforcement of this proves difficult sometimes due to smuggling from neighboring wildmen territories near the Deitsch border or from smugglers running in between Rontroit and Cydalia. Being caught smuggling, making, or selling hard drugs carries a penalty of death, with the Cydalian government holding the position that drug use and drug addiction is "degenerate" alongside being incredibly damaging to public health.
Education
Inside Cydalia are some of the oldest and most renowned institutions of higher learning in the world. Harvard College was the first such institution, founded in 1636 at Cambridge, Massachusetts to train preachers. Yale University was founded in Saybrook, Connecticut (now underwater) in 1701, and awarded America's first doctoral degree in 1861. Yale moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1718, where it remained until being put out of commission in the Second American Civil War, in the Battle of Yale. New Haven was taken by the ocean, and Yale was re-established again by the Cydalians in 2232, in Torrington, West Connecticut.
In addition, seven out of the eight pre-Collapse "Ivy League" schools were located within Cydalian borders. The famous pre-Collapse Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, was also located in Cambridge, Massachuestts. It was re-established as in 2204 though in a new location, Lunenburg, Massachusetts.
Various college "consortiums," or groups of colleges closely affiliated with one another, are also common in Cydalia. These include the Wormtown-Cape Consortium, the Five College Consortium in the Pioneer District, three different SUNC consortiums, and the Consortium de Qadia located in the north serving the Qadian populace.
At the pre-collegiate level, Cydalia reformed the pre-Collapse education system into a mix of public and private styled education. Whilst some boarding schools do exist, the average public school in Cydalia is based on a town or regional basis. Attempts at keeping schools small are actively made, with most Cydalian schools numbering no more than 1,000 to 1,500 students total. In addition, many of the high schools in Cydalia have been, or were operating at some point before the founding of the American Empire.
There are many academic journals and publishing companies in the region, new and old, including The "Cydalian Jurnal a Medicine" (formerly The New England Journal of Medicine), and the University Presses of Hahvard and Yale.
All education in Cydalia is free.
Cydalian education is widely regarded as some of the most advanced and highest quality within the modern world, and is known for it's output of students.
Economy
First and foremost, like many other nations in the post-Collapse world, Cydalia is a money-less economy. Originating in a widespread disapproval of American and Western-style Capitalism and Consumerism, Cydalia, like all Merican and most Europan nations, doesn't use money. When dealing with nations that use money, Cydalia has a trading currency, the shilling, but it is not used within Cydalian borders except for in incredibly rare circumstances. Payments and "wages" are given in the form of a "social contract" between the people and the nation. According to the Cydalian constitution, "working and serving the nation is beneficial, and it is only just that the worker and servant receives what is worthy in return." Said social contract essentially dictates that as long as a member of society works to benefit society as a whole via public service, defense, or labor in one way or another, they should get something in return for their positive actions. Essentially, workers produce for all in the nation and are paid by being able to access these goods. Members of the National Labor Corps and the Military are given preference in ability to access.
While families that produce raw goods are allowed to keep a portion for themselves, the majority of what can be considered resources are collectivized by the government and then re-distributed where they need to be given. Cydalia maintains extensive resource stores for whatever it can hold, be it lumber, food, minerals, metals, or general technology. As shown by the success of the DPEK and certain African nations in weathering the Collapse, autarky is seen as good by the government. Cydalia, according to government estimates, is roughly 98-99% self-sufficient.
The official organization of labor in Cydalia follows a mixture of medievalist guild and industrial syndicalist and corporatist principles. Traces of distributism are also present. Workers are organized according to their trade and each trade is organized into a "syndicate," with other terms such as "union," "guild," "company," or "corporation" being used interchangeably. The terms "corporation" or "company" are generally frowned upon, however, due to the connotations of pre-Collapse Capitalism and Consumerism. Within these syndicates, increasingly specialized trades become common. Each trade union is led by a Guildmaster who is a member of CFIP, and each Guildmaster is regularly consulted by Pahlament and other state officials for how the state can increase productivity or for how the syndicate(s) can benefit the nation as a whole on a larger scale.
Agriculture
- big - wheat - corn - asparagus - livestock - as is common, cydalia follows the autarky rules but does export/import food via trade - sustainable agriculture
Cydalia is an agricultural nation. The Natives had been farming for millennia before the arrival of European colonists, who arrived also as farmers. Throughout the centuries, Cydalia continued to be a leading example of small homestead farming.
In the modern era, most families in Cydalia are involved in agriculture in one way or another.
Industry
- cydalia is an agro-industrial nation - heavy industry is a thing again - lowell mills - "green industry"
Services
Science and Technology
Cydalia is generally regarded as one of the top 10 nations in the world that contributes to scientific progress. Given a general ranking of 6 out of 10, Cydalia's current
Transport
Despite a low population density, Cydalia's transport sector is well developed and generally well regarded as one of the best on the continent given Cydalia's low population density. Though many were destroyed during the Second American Civil War and the ensuing Collapse, most of Cydalia's road systems have been rebuilt and are regarded as surprisingly efficient. Airports are not as common as they were pre-Collapse, and Cydalia maintains only one international airport, located in Pioneer, which is generally used by the military and government officials, though it does take in tourists every other autumn on account with allowed tourism quotas and "leafer" seasons. Additionally, all trains in Cydalia are bullet trains with the exception of subways, and rails connect all major cities to one another. Boat travel within the nation is also common, due to the nation's long shorelines and many islands in the northeast.
Each District in Cydalia has it's own Transportation Syndicate, responsible for planning, developing, and building transportation routes throughout the district and cooperating with other DTS organizations for their mutual responsibilities. Additionally, every major city in Cydalia has a local TS, which oversees the transport in the city and surrounding region. The New Hahtland Transportation Syndicate, or NHTS, is the largest of these. It oversees all public transportation in the Greater New Hahtland area and a few surrounding cities and towns. It operates in the lower third of the West Connecticut District alongside the eastern part of the Hudson-Leigh District. All major cities in Cydalia maintain both below-ground subway system, and an above ground tram-trolley system. Subways are used for citywide travel, and the tram-trolley systems are generally used for shorter distances. One of the first metros in the United States and the world was the MTBA metro, which was located in the greater Boston area.
CYTRAK provides all interdistrict rail travel throughout the nation. Amqui in Longshore is the northeastern terminus of CYTRAK's rails, while Williamsport's Nisbet-Banhoff is the terminus of the southern rail line. One train connects the entirety of the nation, the Vermonter, which was in service prior to the Second American Civil War. With it's original route expanded from northern Vermont to one from Amqui to Buffalo, the train essentially does a round-trip of Cydalia every day.
Bus transport is available in most suburban areas and a few rural areas, and is governed by regional or local TS. The Shortshore Transportation Syndicate and the Upstate Transportation Syndicate are examples of TSes that provide bus transport to more rural regions of the nation.
Almost all families in Cydalia own at least one personal vehicle. Most vehicles are solar powered or run on some variant of biofuel. Most vehicles are based on pre-Collapse models with extensive modifications, though in recent years, due to more world stability and government incentives, locally designed models are becoming more and more common. The same is reflected on boats, with most families in coastal areas having some sort of sea faring vehicle.
In other regions of Cydalia, such as Deitschland, horses and buggies are common. In more rural areas with extensive farms, horse travel is a common mode of transportation for short to medium distance travel.
Energy
All energy within Cydalia is renewable and "green," and is required by law to be so. Overall, the most common forms of energy are solar, wind, hydroelectric, and biofuel. In certain areas, such as the Green-White Mountain District or other more mountainous areas, geothermal power is occasionally used, though this is mainly for heating buildings. Cydalian government programs in recent decades have attempted to make each home and most businesses in Cydalia self-sufficient in energy production. As of 2320, roughly 83% of houses and 44% of businesses are self-sufficient.
Solar power is most common throughout the western and southern regions of Cydalia due to their wider, open spaces, and more open territory. Wind power also tends to appear more in these areas, but most wind farms within the legal boundaries of Cydalia are usually a few miles off the coastline. Hydroelectricity is used mostly in the central and northern regions of the nation, where dams and levees are common. Thanks to bio-engineering from nations such as Rontroit, biofuel is much more efficient in the 2300s than it ever has been. Rarely used, biofuel is generally an automotive and long-distance transportation based fuel.
Hydroelectricity in Cydalia is achieved through multiple sources. The most common source of hydropower is conventional, followed by tidal hydropower. Conventional hydroelectricity is derived from the potential energy of still or dammed water that is pushed through a turbine and generator, creating energy. The power generated from this process depends on two variables: the height difference between the source and the outflow, and the volume of the water being pushed through the turbine. Conventional power is used in a few dams in and around the Quabbin Sea.
Tidal power stations use the tides to generate power, and are incredibly common due to tides being easily predictable. Additionally, if reservoirs are constructed, they can generate high amounts of energy during demand periods. Tidal power is more common than conventional hydropower, though conventional produces more energy due to the amount of water moved.
In smaller towns by rivers, run-of-the-river hydroelectric stations are used. They use water coming from upstream to generate power, and they also store oversupply as excess energy for demand periods and for times when rivers are running low. A constant supply of water running from lakes or upstream reservoirs is a great advantage in both choosing sites and overall power, as well as the fact that more rural towns with smaller populations don't need to rely on external sources of electricity generation. If all rivers in Cydalia were used for ROTR style energy, an estimated 31% of Cydalia's energy could come from it.
Wind turbines in Cydalia are located in a large variety of places, and many cities and larger towns -- even those not in the west and south -- have wind turbines above more modern lampposts and some buildings. Additionally, most highway sign posts have at least one turbine built into them.
Biofuel is generally comprised of various forms of natural biomass. Fossils fuels are not really used in Cydalia or most other nations. Contrary to pre-Collapse definitions, solid biomass that is burned as fuel such as kindling, pellets, or briquettes are classified as biofuel by the government. Liquid and gaseous fuels are also counted as biofuel. Since most biofuels tend to be able to regrow fast enough, it is considered renewable energy. The majority of biofuel in Cydalia comes from grasses, algae, and chaff.
In the past, both New England and the Maritimes were the most energy-efficient areas in the US and Canada as a whole. This was generally offset by high prices on electricity.
Culture
Cydalia has a shared heritage and culture primarily shaped by waves of immigration from Europe and from the cultures of Native Peoples. Most immigrants from Britain came from Eastern England, contributing initially to the region's unique accents, social customs, and cuisines. Further waves of immigration from France, Ireland, Poland, and other regions continued to shape the region's culture.
The Cultcha Depahtment (Department of Culture) was created in 2149 to both solidify and promote Cydalian culture within areas of Cydalian control. Sub-chambers were set up to control aspects of cultural life such as television, the neonet, film, radio, news, fine arts, music, theatre and literature. Members of these professions were required to join their respective organisation. Books and scripts have to be approved by the Department prior to publication.
Art
- Thomas Cole - Neoromanticisim - Nationalist Art
Architecture
- Colonial Style Houses - Saltboxes - Cathedrals - Connected farms - Collegiate Gothics - Castles
Literature
Philosophy
Music
- tune yards esque shit The Cydalian anthem is a variant of the old Canadian patriotic song "The Maple Leaf Forever." The Cydalian anthem takes lyrical inspiration from a cover of the song from the Canadian music duo the "Connors Brothers." The lyrics were edited into a more friendly version for Cydalian politics.
| Cydalian | English |
|---|---|
| In days a yore, ta oure wild shor
Foreign colonizas came And planted firm their conquerahs flags Where Native peoples reigned From struggles into hope they formed A nation 'ere togetha That there might be eternally Cydalia forevah! Through bittah wahs in ah great cause Brave Cydalians fought an died Now we, their children, gauhd the peace Upon ah green hillsides We'll not break faith with glories past The torch we'll lowah nevah A shining light to all the world Cydalia forevah! From Scoshun land and south Deitsch strands Buffalo to Bostyn's sound May patriot love unite us land True Commonwealth be found; And may Cydalians young and old Uphold ah great endeavah And proudly say eternally Cydalia forevah! Cydalia ah nation deah, Cydalia forevah! And proudly say, eternally, Cydalia forevah! |
In days of yore, to our wild shore Foreign colonizers came And planted firm their conquerors' flags Where Native peoples reigned From struggles into hope they formed A nation here together That there might be eternally Cydalia forever!
Through bitter wars in our great cause Brave Cydalians fought and died Now we, their children, guard the peace Upon our green hillsides We'll not break faith with glories past The torch we'll lower never A shining light to all the world Cydalia forever! From Scoshun land and south Deitsch strands Buffalo to Bostyn's sound May patriot love unite us and True commonwealth be found; And may Cydalians young and old Uphold our great endeavour And proudly say eternally Cydalia forever! Cydalia, our nation dear, Cydalia forever! And proudly say eternally, Cydalia forever! |
Cinema
- "neo-marvel" superhero movies are also popular, and tend to have nationalistic/political messages - "angel and witch" movies Cydalian Cinema is widely regarded to be one of the most "unevolved" forms of cinema in post-Collapse Merica. Cydalia's national history regarding cinema traces back centuries, with some of the most well known pre-Collapse actors, writers, and directors coming from what is today Cydalia. Additionally, during the debut of the motion picture in the 20th century, the "Eastern Hollywood" period began, with many famous American novels such as The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, and The Headless Horseman becoming popular. Though there was a lull in production during the rest of the 20th century, it quickly picked back up in the 21st century due to tax breaks and incentives given to filmmakers by the then in power local governments.
During the Second American Civil War, many New England film studios produced propaganda pieces for the NATO-aligned Federal Government. After the Collapse, production largely came to a complete halt.
During the rise of Cydalia to become the northeastern hegemon that it is today, the role of cinema in propaganda films distributed to peoples in modern day Maine, Scosha, and upstate New York were instrumental in cementing the Cydalian national identity alongside gaining popular support from newly conquered and joined regions. The most important of these films is widely considered to be Why're We Here? starring Gordon Castilho as an unnamed Cydalian soldier during the conquest of Deitsland from central Appalachian raider tribes and petty kingdoms.
In the modern era, Cydalia leads Merican filmmakers in the "Neo-American" film style, with them spearheading the current superhero movie genre in Merica, Afrika, Antartida, Ceania, and Europa. As is the case with many other Neo-American films, most Cydalian movies have overt nationalistic and political film messages, while still referencing past themes common in pre-Collapse society. These include the contrast between urban and rural life (with a common message being the idealization of one or another fighting the harsh reality), dark secrets inspired by the works of authors such as Lovecraft, seafaring tales, family and development, and a more recently popular one being the paranormal and spiritual history of Cydalia, which dates back to the 1690s with the Salem Witch Trials.
One of the most well known Cydalian movie series is the "Angel of Hadley" series, in which Adrian Goffe (played by Harold Alai) finds an old helmet from the 1600s on the banks of the Quabbin Sea. After witnessing a series of supernatural crimes in his hometown, he becomes determined to put an end to them and to solve the mystery as to who (and what) is behind them. Taking the moniker of the "Angel," he eventually discovers a plot led by a possessed witch, Salem Veralyn (played by Temperance Juchelski) to steal, and then destroy, a series of artifacts relating to witchcraft throughout Cydalia. His moniker takes after the "Angel of Hadley," an old Western Massachusetts folk legend. Temperance is more obviously inspired by the Salem Witch Trials. The conflict is eventually resolved when Salem and Adrian solve Salem's possession, and the two spark up a romance that continues on for the rest of the film series.
The following films introduce more characters based around significant Cydalian cultural groups and their interactions with one another, and then their interactions with other superheroes in Merica. In addition to Angel and Salem, there is:
1. Louis "Ranger" Prutt, a Black Cydalian member of the elusive "Green Mountain Boys" and a Cydalian Army Ranger, transformed by a super soldier serum who uses a heavily modified musket with guided bullets.
2. Zachariah "Hoch" Hochstetler, a Deitsch farmer who discovers he has telekinetic powers at a young age and is conscripted into the Cydalian military. His character arc revolves around him trying to balance his duty to fatherland with his pacifist religious duties.
3. Seamus "Highlander" Costigan, a Scoshun engineer who designs himself a highly-advanced mech suit, reminiscent of "Iron Man" and "War Machine" from pre-Collapse superhero movies. He joins up with the rest of "the team" after proving himself by defending Cydalian fishermen from pirates and raiders in international waters.
4. Jaques "Woodsman" Mufferaw, a stereotypical Qadian "Bucheron," or lumberjack, who after a freak military research accident gone wrong, gains the power to manipulate all types of wood. He joins after preventing poachers.
5. Skenadoa "Sosondowah" Wahta,
Dress and Fashion
Cydalian fashion is generally a more conservative form of dress. Traditional Cydalian dress is generally inspired by Colonial American fashions of the 1600s-mid 1800, most predominantly the "Pilgrims" that arrived in Plymouth. Regional variations are common, however. It is characterized by "sadd" colors and more modest cuts. Female dresses tend to be high cut on the chest with color-contrasting collars, and male dress tends to be somewhat militaristic. Bright colors, while not intentionally avoided, are generally ignored except as highlights. Shiny fabrics and over ornamentation are likewise eschewed, but not unheard of. Fashion culture tends to be made of heavier fabrics, such as cotton, dyed into darker colors. Laid atop these base layers are generally lighter colored and lighter fabrics such as silk or linen, which are generally seen in the forms of cuffs, collars, or undershirts. Traditionally speaking, "baggy" and ill-fitting clothes are considered to be unfashionable and nonconforming for both genders. Exceptions are made for some dresses and forms of pants, in which minor bell shapes are allowed, though these are rarely used outside formal occasions. Generally, tighter and more slender clothing is worn. Slender sleeves, tight bodices, and long skirts are both common and seen as desirable. Layers are encouraged, though this is generally relaxed in the summer months. When possible though, due to the conservative culture and the weather, multiple layers of clothing are worn. Petticoats are common for women, and collared shirts and dresses accent roughly everything. For both genders, wide brim hats of a solid color are common. Additionally, "witchy" styles that incorporate fantasy elements such as green accents or large pointed hats with wide brims have been common in Cydalia since it's foundation, due to the national character of the nation.
"Sadd" colors originally entailed blacks, browns, greys, and tans, though in the case of Cydalia certain other colors such as greens, darker blues, purples, and dark reds are common. Lighter colors tend to be in the form of reds, yellows, whites, and blues. Older American styles have also come back in recent years, with tweed and other such fabrics becoming increasingly common, along with slimmer suits for men.
Everyday fashion in Cydalia tends to be much more relaxed on overall restrictions, despite still remaining socially conservative. Ornamentation is generally still done via contrasting colors or textures of clothing, with an example of this being frills on a white silk or cotton undershirt being met with a smoother, black woolen overcoat. Additionally, the relationship that each gender has on the fashion of the other gender is symbiotic. Simply speaking, if a trend is adopted by one gender, the other gender, generally within a few years, tends to adopt something similar. An example of this is a recent resurgence in baggier blouses in women, which saw looser shirts being worn by men soon after.
Women's fashion tends to be comprised mainly of dresses and long, slender skirts. Pants, generally high waisted, are worn by women of all ages, though skirts and dresses tend to be more popular. Skirts are generally slimmer, and the hemline can be cut anywhere from knee to ankle length. Sleeve length additionally can vary, though sleeveless clothing is almost never worn in public. At times, cloves of varying length are worn on formal or semi-formal occasions when sleeve lengths are shorter. Dresses are generally one piece. When not a single piece, they are generally paired with a blouse of varying size and a jacket, usually a Zouave jacket or some sort of vest. Vests, when worn over blouses or something similar, are generally much more low cut. Blazers are also common. Ruffles tend to only exist on jackets, vests, and blouses. Coatdresses are incredibly common outerwear, and the post-Collapse invention, the Hooddress, essentially a hoodie mixed with a lighter fabric dress, having been invented in Hudson-Leigh around 2095. Most modern coats, jackets, and blazers tend to have pointed and asymmetrical collars and zippers. For women, shoes tend to vary depending on the reason of outing. Heels and more open formal shoes are worn during formal occasions during warmer months. Day to day wear may include sneakers, flats, or some other sort of "day to day" shoe. Additionally, leather or fur boots that reach to the mid-calf or to the knee are incredibly popular for both genders. Hairstyles for women can vary greatly. Modern styles for women tend to have hair either in a bob (around chin length) or slightly past shoulder length. Other styles may reach the middle of the back. Individual hairstyles vary widely between individuals, and no real one hairstyle is common or idealized.
Fashion for men in Cydalia likewise conforms to the "formal" ideal set by women's fashion. Suits and more stylized outer layers are included in daily wear, though this changes depending on a variety of other factors including profession, time of year, and more. Men's fashion tends to be more simple and militaristic compared to that of women. Typically, an undershirt of a solid color, plaid, or tartan is used as a base, and the rest of an outfit is generally based upon that. Vests, coats, jackets, and pants are all used to form a complete outfit. Sashes are also common. In colder months, thicker coats, such as buffcoats or greatcoats, are commonly worn. Regardless of season, boots of varying length are commonly worn. Many Cydalian boots tend to integrate side zippers for ease of access. For men, hair is generally anywhere from "short" to shoulder length. Longer styles of hair are either let down, or, in the case of more long hairdos, tied up in either a ponytail or a bun. Facial hair likewise varies, with mustaches and beards being commonly seen amongst men. Beards tend to be shorter in the northeast, south, and center of the country, while longer beards are common in the west and north.
Additionally, in recent years, due to the MU opening up communications between nations more and more, "Neemo" styles from nations such as Federalia have taken a foothold in some sections of Cydalia's youth. This includes a resurgence in wide brimmed hats and jet black hair. Additional subcultures have also developed within Cydalia in recent years, the most prominent of these being "Soft Witches," or "Switches." Switch fashion generally takes more inspiration from traditional dress and combines it with certain aspects of modern, every day dress. Hair dye, overalls, and a variety of glasses, used mainly for aesthetic reasons, are common within Switch culture. Baggier pants are worn, and short sleeves are included in many dresses, and most color contrasts are done in duos. Orange and yellow would be paired against darker blues and blacks, or white and pink with black and silver colors. Wide brim and pointy hats, generally made out of felt, velvet, or a similar material, are common. Switch culture is also known for its many references to Cydalian media, and most Switches generally self-categorize into different subsets based on what pieces of entertainment they enjoy the most.
Hair dye, while not illegal, is uncommon except in some cases. Generally used within the Switch subculture, women tend to dye their hair in a variety of colors. Pinks, blues, purples, and reds are common. Additionally, some women choose to bleach their hair to blonde or white.
Native Iroquoian and Algonquian dress tends to use heavy amounts of leather, furs, and animal products. Decorative beads and tassels were also generally woven into more elaborate clothing. Moccasins and boots were worn as shoes. In the modern era, Native dress has merged with the predominant Cydalian dress to create a unique fusion in which traditional Native patterns are common, especially as accessories. They are generally worn by people with Native ancestry, or those who are full-blooded Iroquoians or Algonquians.
Qadian fashion tends to be very influential on modern Cydalian fashion. Traditional Qadian dress is much more colorful and is heavily based on patterns such as tartans or plaids. A common stereotype of Qadians due to their traditional occupations as fishermen and woodsmen is that they wear jeans, plaids, beanie hats or ushankas, and boots. In recent years, Qadian fashion has taken advantage of this trend due to it's growing popularity with the general Cydalian population.
Out of all minorities in Cydalia, Scoshun dress is the most common to the Cydalian-speaking majority. Overalls and suspenders are slightly more common than in other regions due to the fishing industry, and in some cases, especially during winter, women may wear thigh-high boots.
Deitsch dress is overall, strikingly similar to Cydalian fashion, though it tends to use much brighter colors in contrast to the darker colors of the Cydalian-speaking north. Additionally, Deitsch customs generally forego buttons in favor of hooks or other style of binders. Deitsch men tend to wear straight-cut jackets and coats without collars, pockets, or lapels. These are called mutza suits. During the warmer months, vests are generally used instead of mutzas. The fabric of choice is generally linen that is tightly woven together. Additionally, within Deitsch communities, the blacker the fabric is, the better. Due to manufacturing reasons, most Cydalian black fabrics tend to have blue, brown, or grey shades of black. Deitsch schwarz, in the fashion world, is made with all black strands of thread. Deitsch women tend to wear solid color dresses and a full skirt, and bodices are generally covered by a cape. Sleeve length can vary from full sleeves to short sleeves, though rolled up sleeves in the spring and summer are used by the majority of Deitsch women. Stockings and socks are made of black cotton, and shoes are also generally black. Previously banned under the Amish religion, with the conversion of the Deitsch population to Catholicism, patterned clothing is allowed. Trousers, worn by men more than by women, are generally always black. They never have creases or cuffs. They are worn with suspenders that are generally the same fabric as the pants. The Deitsch typicall wear broad brimmed hats made out of felt for formal events and for during the winter. During the summer months, farmers generally wear stroh hoots, straw hats. During the winter, tsiple kops, or knit beanies, are worn. Deitsch men are generally clean shaven prior to marriage, and married men are required by custom to grow beards out. Mustaches were originally forbidden as adornment, but they are still generally not worn by Amish men.
Cydalian military uniforms are based on that of Civil War America. Wearing military or national labor corps uniform in public by members of said groups is seen as fashionable.
A drawing of a girl from a Cydalian fashion blog.
An example of longer, slender dresses traditionally worn in Cydalia.
Overall male fashion tends to be militaristic.
Within newer fashion trends, more hair dye is common.
Fashion trends tend to remain changing even with generational gaps, staying largely the same regardless of age.
Native fashion trends tend to take influences from other Native groups and combine them with Cydalian characteristics, such as the wide brimmed black hat.
Media
Cydalian media referrs to mass media throughout the nation. For the most part, Cydalian television, e-magazines, and newspapers are operated by the Cydalian government. The Cydalian constitution does not guarantee freedom of speech or freedom of press.
Television was introduced in Cydalia before the Collapse. The Cydalian media market is average sized, though what is produced is generally considered by most to be of abnormally high quality. One leading TV station, CTV is privately owned. Most other Cydalian TV stations are owned by the Cydalian government or a government owned guild or syndicate. Examples of this include CNT (Cydalian News Television), CCT (Cydalian Childrens' Television), CET (Cydalian Entertainment Television), and CPB (Cydalian Public Broadcasting); which usually plays documentaries. Of those, CNT, CCT, and CPB are government owned, while CET is owned by CETS, the Cydalian Entertainment Syndicate. CETS is, in turn, owned by the government, but given more leeway in content restrictions and programming than other stations.
Radio in Cydalia, likewise, was introduced prior to the Collapse and is maintained by the government and certain government owned or government advised guilds. County, state, and regional radio stations are common, and generally play music or comprise of talk radio shows depending on if the station is on AM (talk) or FM (music). - popular channels - talk shows - podcasts?
- computers
Newspapers in Cydalia are all printed digitally. While in the past it was common for most towns in the United States and Canada to have their own individual town newspapers, with the advent of Cydalia's economic policies in the wake of the Climate Collapse and Great Collapse, Cydalian newspapers were banned from printing on actual paper in favor of using digital methods. Additionally, due to the small size of Cydalian towns, most individual town newspapers, while not banned from printing, generally don't exist. Larger towns certainly have newspapers, however. To compensate, county newspapers are the average method of distributing local news, with Cydalian weather services being broken up by county as well. Many pre-Collapse newspapers such as the Boston Globe and Hartford Courant were destroyed during the Climate Collapse due to cities such as Boston and Hartford being swallowed up by rising sea levels. In spite of this, with the founding of Cydalia in the 2100s, many of them were re-established either by the Cydalian government or the descendants of those who lived in the cities. As of now, the largest city newspapers in Cydalia are the New Hahtland Courant, the ABCD (ABCDaily), and The Norumbegan. When it comes to national news, the only national newspaper is The Cydalian, which is owned by CNT.
One of Cydalia's most popular TV shows for children is The Adventures of Peedee the Dinosaur, created by husband and wife team David and Carolina Rybacki. Originally made pre-Collapse in 1989 as a CGI experiment, Peedee was repurposed from a roughly minute long short in which Peedee is melted by a dragon to one of Cydalia's most popular characters. First aired in 2289, exactly 300 years after being created, the Adventures of Peedee was designed to be the "ultimate" children's show, covering a wide variety of topics for children ages 2-14, shown through four different shows. The first one, Adventures of Peedee: Preschool is geared towards children ages 2-6. Adventures of Peedee: Elementary is aimed at children 7-10, and Adventures of Peedee: Junior is aimed at children and young adolescents from the ages of 11-14. A fourth show, Adventures of Peedee: Specials, is aimed at making special episodes for religious and national holidays, geared at all audiences. Essentially, Peedee grows up alongside children in each generation, being able to provide a fictional character to relate to, educate them, and provide good moral lessons alongside the child's parents. Additionally, Peedee provides Cydalian family values. The state does play a role in the production of the show, with Peedee living in a semi-fictional version of Cydalia. Peedee's parents are members of the CFIP party, and despite being a family of large pink dinosaurs, Peedee's family is modeled on the "ideal" Cydalian family. Additionally, many of the episodes of Peedee have direct involvement with the Cydalian Military and Government. Certain exceptions are made, however. Peedee's voice is designed to intentionally be androgynous, and likewise Peedee's gender is never directly referenced in the show. This is so that Cydalian children, boys and girls, can more easily relate to the character.
The animation style of Peedee is meant to be in an ancient, pre-Collapse CGI style that has, as animators described it, "beauty in it's simplicity." At the end of many episodes, Peedee tells the audience that, if it's nice out, they should spend sometime outside because "it looks so much better." The simplistic style is also meant to grab the attention of younger viewers, who may be put off by having too much on screen at a single given moment.
Since the premiere of the show in 2289, Peedee has become one of the most recognizable characters in Cydalia, and is somewhat well known in other Merican nations. Cydalian pop culture frequently generates ironic and post-ironic memes about Peedee going on various other adventures, with military deployment being a popular one. Additionally, Peedee has made appearances on many other television shows both as cameos and as references. These include talk shows, other children's cartoons, and even some TV shows meant for adult audiences. In season 3 of Norumbega, the character of Farrow attempts to prove to his (adult) friends that Peedee "exists in real life" after experiencing brain trauma, only for Peedee to make a cameo as a "real character" at the end of the episode. Peedee has also starred in movies, and has a musical.
Peedee was partially inspired by the pre-Collapse shows such as Spongebob Squarepants, Adventure Time, Arthur, Infinity Train, Steven Universe, The Amazing World of Gumball, She-Ra: Princesses of Power, and Liberty's Kids.
Teenage, Young Adult, and Adult animation in Cydalia can generally be broken up into two styles, both of which depend on the art styles used to produce them. These two genres are referred to "Eastun" and "Westun." Eastun styles refer to shows and movies that are drawn in a pre-Collapse "Eastern" style, as in East Asian, with a specific regard to Japan. Alternatively known by colloquialism as "Anime," many movies and television shows in Cydalia follow this type of art style, giving Cydalia's own unique style of animation within this genre. Overall, it is most similar to California and Oregonju in artistic style and influence, taking much from the 1970-1990s period of anime alongside the artistic renaissance similar styles experienced in the 2140-2170 time period. Eastun anime typically features less stylized and more "realistic" faces and body types, with thick brows and rounded eyes and faces. In addition, contrary to most Westun forms of animation, Eastun style shows tend to touch on more "realistic" or action based topics, such as war, science, and action, though "slice of life" shows such as "Haudenosaunee Summer" and Le Journal d'Emily Viger (The Journal of Emily Viger) are not unheard of.
Westun styles of animation are the descendants of a variety of American animation styles that date from the turn of the millennium, and tend to be much more "cartoonish" than others, with rounded lines and figures, large round eyes, and an overall "bouncy" form. Again, this is similar in style to Californian animation. Considered to be similar to "Cal-arts" or "Tumblr" styles of animation, Westun shows are typically referred to as "cartoons." They generally touch on more juvenile subjects or are meant more for abject entertainment, and are generally geared towards a younger audience, with most Westun shows and cartoons proving to be popular with the ages of 13-18. Examples of this include Amos and Colrain.
In more recent years, styles of animation from other nations such as Federalia, Cahokia, and Colorado have begun to have an effect within Cydalia. As most animation within these nations tends to follow a style akin to 1960s Hanna-Barbera works such as Scooby Doo, a small but growing number of shows and animated movies tend to follow this style. An example of this is the 2318 Dittrich and Dougal, which follows a Roman Catholic Priest (Malachai Dittrich, voiced by Zachariah Hochstetler) from Deitsland working together with a scientist from Scosha (Breas Dougal, voiced by Martin O'Fionnghaile) to stop a crime racket shipping stolen weapons to wildmen in Deitsland. Widely acclaimed for its handling of the conflict between science and religion, it was given awards and greenlit by CET for a TV show in 2319, and began to premiere in January of 2320.
Society
Modern Cydalian society, regardless of ethnicity or linguistic grouping, is heavily regimented. Cydalia officially promotes Integralist Society, a national Cydalian cultural identity. Started with the formation of Cydalia in 2199, the goal was to build a "traditional and medievalist" society based on cultural unions and alliances, alongside the perceived need to prepare for warfare, conquest and a struggle against the World at large. Compared to the pre-Collapse American and Canadian identities, Cydalian culture tends to scorn individualism and materialism. Most of these new cultural values have much to do with the leadership and influence of the CFIP.
Regarding minority races and cultures, the "national identity" of Cydalia allows for and actively promotes minority cultures that it considers to be a part of it, namely Deitsch, Qadian, Scoshun, Black, and Natives. All cultures regardless of size are given equal promotion, and Cydalian schools require students to take a language course from a culture not of their own. Minority cultures are required to learn Cydalian Standard English, and native speakers of CSE are given a choice as to what they wish to learn. Deitsch is the most common, followed by Iroquoian, Qadian, Scoshun, and Algonquian.
Race in Cydalia was originally a much larger social question than it currently is. Over the past two centuries, race has become less of an issue, with the general perception of race in Cydalia moving from "race vs. race" to "Cydalian races vs. outsiders." In addition, Cydalian society views race as both social and biological. Standard CFIP philosophy states that "the majority of racial issues are based in the naturally tribalistic attitude of humanity," and that whatever biological issues exist due to race can be solved via medicine and eugenicist practices such as selective breeding. Cydalia's founding constitution states that all races are equal under Cydalian law, and race in modern Cydalia seems to follow more of a "different but equal" mentality, with designated cultural and racial zones set aside in most major settlements.
There is a heavy emphasis on the "traditional masculinity" of the Cydalian Man, stressing aggression, virility, youth, speed and sport alongside providing for a family, defense of community, neighborly outreach, and overall brotherhood. Women are generally expected to attend to motherhood, the home, and to stay out of public affairs.
Cuisine
Cydalian cuisine is, like many other Merican cuisines, inspired by the cuisines of America, Canada, and their various immigrant groups. Major influences in Cydalian cuisine come from Éire, Polska, Britain, Deutschland, Portugal, Brasil, France, Québec, Mexico, Zhongguo, Bharat, Nijeriya, and many more places. Not to be forgotten, however, is the heavy influence that Colonial American and Canadian cuisine had on Cydalian food, alongside Native American foods as well.
Cydalians generally tend to have three to four meals throughout the day. The usual three are breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A fourth meal, either brunch or a "midnight snack" is added on as well sometimes. As mandated by CFIP policy, all towns in Cydalia are required to hold a monthly community meal, generally called a "Monthie." Monthies are hosted at different times each month and are left up to the discretion of the individual town. They are either hosted in schools during inclement weather or the winter, and are usually held outside, either on a main street or on a bridge. Considered a community building event, they are encouraged so that towns and neighborhoods have strong individual ties to one another. Somewhat like a potluck, both families and restaurants prepare food for the occasion. In larger settlements or around military bases, the military also prepares food for the locals as well. Marriages at monthies are common events.
Due to long coastlines and a heavy reliance on the sea throughout history, Cydalian cuisine is quite heavy on seafood. The national dish is clam chowdah (ENG: chowder), and many regional dishes incorporate seafood in one way or another into food. These include clam bakes, crab cakes, lobsta rolls, and variations of chowda that focus on fish instead of clams. Fish, crab, lobster, and clam are the most commonly used sea animals in Cydalian cooking.
Pickling is common, and almost every vegetable has a pickled variety. Outside of cucumbers, the most commonly pickled items are carrots, garlic, eggs, fiddlehead ferns, and proteins such as fish and sausages. A pickle common to the Deitsch is the beet egg, where whole eggs and beets are pickled alongside onions, sugar, vinegar, salt, cloves, and sticks of cinnamon. The eggs take on a pink-purple color from the beets, and have a sweet-sour taste. Beet-eggs are a common ingredient in Cydalian cooking.
Common vegetables in Cydalian food include legumes such as peas and beans. The most common starch is the potato, with a wide variety of potatoes being cultivated. Other starches and carbohydrates such as corn, Indian Maize, wheat, and barley are grown. Additionally, sweet potatoes are a common ingredient in many sweet dishes. Pumpkins and squash are also common. Root vegetables such as ramps, onions, shallots, garlic, tend to be used often in Cydalian meals to enhance flavor. Main ingredients that are root vegetables include beets, turnips, rutabagas, cattails, and Jerusalem artichokes. Common greens include kale, fiddlehead ferns, lettuce, cabbage, spinach, and collard greens. Additionally, other vegetables such as carrots, celery, parsnips, broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts.
Common fruits include apples, pears, peaches, grapes, plums, figs, and berries such as raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, and strawberries. Cranberries also play a large role in Cydalian cuisine, and Cydalian foods are stereotyped to have cranberries "in everything."
The national dish of Cydalia, clam chowdah, is generally prepared in one of three styles: Massachusetts, Hudson, or Providence. Massachusetts style chowdah is generally analogous to pre-Collapse Boston or New England clam chowder, in that the base is used with milk or cream, and it is thickened using crackers or hardtack instead of flour. Hudson styled chowdah is made with a tomato base, either pureed or chunky, and thickened with flour. Providence style chowdah is a mix of the two, where a milk or cream base has tomatoes added to it, creating a thick creamy tomato base. Regardless, all forms of chowdah have the same components: clam, potatoes, onions, and occasionally bacon. Fish and corn chowdah variations are also common.
As for traditional dinners, Cydalians generally have either a seafood clam bake, or a boiled dinner. Boiled dinners are more popular in Scosha and in other regions with high Celtic influences. Clam bakes are traditionally more coastal.
Apart from that, other popular dishes in Cydalian cuisine include grinders (submarine sandwiches), chicken and dumplings, corned beef, mashed potatoes, and varieties of pizza. Most pizza in Cydalia is either the old New York style, or the local New Haven style. Pizzas in Cydalia are generally cooked Greek style. Additionally, other variants exist depending on the region of Cydalia one is in. In the north, "garlic finger" style pizza is popular, and in the south, tomato pies are common and enjoyed by the populace.
Soups are also common in Cydalia.
With the destruction of Canada and it's reduction of size, Cydalia is now the world's largest maple syrup producer. First made by the Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples in the pre-Colonial era, the practice of making maple syrup was adopted by European settlers soon after they arrived. Production methods were refined, and technological provements in the 1850s and 1970s made syrup processing a much more refined art. The Northern and Northeastern regions of Cydalia are responsible for roughly 60% of the world's output of maple syrup and other maple products. Many syndicates, guilds, and individual syrup makers tend to have friendly competition with Québécois syrup producers.
Minority cultures in Cydalia have certainly added to the national cuisine. A primary example is the affect that traditionally "Black" cuisine during the reign of the American Empire. Examples of this prove the popularity of collard greens and similar dishes in Cydalia. Additionally, the amount of corn and cornmeal-based products as ingredients in Cydalian food is widely regarded to have been brought on historically via Black Americans and Native Americans. Traditional vegetables harvested by the Iroquoians and Algonquians such as ramps and fiddlehead ferns are widely used in modern Cydalian cuisine. Members of the Steadfast community may have had the most impact out of all the minority groups in Cydalia, however. This is likely due to the Steadfast referring to a wide variety of immigrant groups from pre-Collapse America and Canada, such as Asians, Arabs, Indians, and Hispanics. Hispanic dishes such as tacos, pico de gallo, and burritos prove to remain popular in Cydalian cuisine, though they generally have a Cydalian spin on them. Asian food such as spring rolls and sweet and sour pork are also still popular. Additionally, curry is a popular style of food in both Indian and Caribbean varieties. Many families of Steadfast descent have traditionally been somewhat confined to food-producing roles, due to an old American belief that people of certain racial background tend to be better at making certain foods. Steadfast rights activists, supported by CFIP and the rest of the Cydalian government, have acted to fix this in recent decades, with the official policy put in place by King Planter I in 2319 to the general populace being "You're smart enough to read a cookbook. Make the recipe yourself, it's not hard."
Deitsch food is known for its reliance on pies and other sweets. While northern Cydalia may produce the most sweetener, southern Cydalia produces the most sweetened food and likewise consumes the most sweetened products. Pies such as Melassich Riwwelboi (shoo-fly pie) rely on molasses for flavoring, and additionally the Deitsch invented whoopie pie is widely enjoyed not only in Cydalia, but across Merica, even post-Collapse. Certain types of breads, such as bulkie rolls, are generally regarded as Deitsch foods.
In places such as Qadia and Scosha, regional spins on popular dishes are also common, with most styles of beef being substituted for corned beef, and Qadians generally make toutieres. In modern Cydalia, overall differences in cuisine between cultural groups have mellowed out and are not as common, with the most common difference between groups actually being within the white Cydalian majority, depending on family recipes that have to do more with immigration. For example, a family with roots in Poland would eat pierogi, whereas a family of Brazilian ancestry is more likely to eat dishes that feature rice and beans as a side. Regardless of this, the effect that minority cultures within Cydalia have had on Cydalia's overall cuisine still shows in modernity, with Iroquoian restaurants proving popular, and with traditional Algonquian maple powder, or sinsibuckwud, is the most popular sweetener in Cydalia, being topped only by honey.
Drinks unique to Cydalia of the alcoholic and non-Alcoholic variety are also common. Non-alcoholic beverages include drinks such as root beer and birch beer, which have both been made by indigenous peoples since pre-Colonial times. Root beer is the most popular soft drink except in Hudson-Leigh, where fruit flavored soft drinks are more common. Scosha also manufactures Dotair Simmons, a soft drink based off of the pre-Collapse Doctor Pepper. Drinks reminiscent of pre-Collapse sodas such as Coca-Cola also appear, though this is rare. During the New Dark Ages, fermenting milk based drinks became increasingly common, and Fermil, or fermented milk, became common. Fermil is most similar to the Turkish ayran, or the Persian doogh. It contains yogurt, sour cream, water, and salt. The most popular drinks in Cydalia are water, milk, and types of juices.
Caffeinated beverages are generally coffee, tea, or beverages that have been spiced with sinsibuckwud. Coffee is prepared in a variety of styles, though a popular variation, the frappe, is native to Cydalia. Brought over by Greek immigrants pre-Collapse, it is instant coffee brewed and then mixed with crushed ice, cream, and sugar.
Alcoholic beverages are common. The drinking age in Cydalia is universally 16 years of age, though thanks to media campaigns regarding safe alcohol use, most alcohol is bought by people 19 and over. Beers, gin, rum, wines, whiskeys and vodkas are common depending on the region. Wines are typically made in Central and Southern Cydalia due to the prevalence of the Concord Grape, which results in red wines, though the populace prefers the term "purple" when referring to wines made with the Concord. Whiskeys are common in Scosha and parts of Massachusetts and Pioneer. Rum and vodkas are generally consumed in the center of the nation.
Cydal, alternatively known as cider or cidah, is the drink that gave Cydalia it's name. Made from apples, Cydalian cydal is renowned around both Merica and the world for its quality and wide variety of flavors depending on individual processing differences. The process of making cydal involves taking the liquid from all components of an apple such as the apple itself, the core, culls, or trimmings. It is then pressed and left unfiltered. Production of cydal is generally cheap and simple, with most households in the nation owning a small cydal press. Opaque due to fine particles of apples and tangier than most juices, it is then drank either unpasteurized or the germs are killed off using UV irradiation. Pasteurization is rarely used due to potential changes in flavor. It is a seasonal drink, mainly produced in autumn and winter. From there, cydal generally has three paths: "normal," wassail, or hard cydal. Normal cydal is left alone and is drank as is. Wassail is cydal that has been heated and mulled, and generally has extra additions such as cloves, citrus fruits, and cinnamon. Maple sugar is also a common addition. Hard cydal is fermented to create alcohol, and hard cydal is a common drink in Cydalian taverns. A similar drink, perry, is used using pear juices instead of apples.
Spiced beverages such as flip, switchel, and eggnog can be either alcoholic or non-alcoholic, and are consumed by both children and adults.
Sports
Some of the most popular sports in Cydalia include football, soccer, hockey, baseball, basketball, volleyball, and boatball. With the commencement of the Merican Cup series in 2275, Cydalia has hosted tournaments for each of the previously mentioned sports except soccer at least once. The Dudley Stadium in New Hahtland is the largest stadium in Cydalia, and it was the venue for the 2299 Merican Superbowl and the 2305 Superbowl. Additionally, Cydalia hosts a large part of the Appalachian trail, a pre-Collapse mountain trail frequented by many hikers and marathon runners. The most popular martial art in Cydalia is fencing. Cydalia, in the past, was the site of many important sports being conceived. The sports of volleyball, basketball, and baseball were all invented in Massachusetts from between the 1790s to the 1920s.
The largest sports within Cydalia are baseball, hockey, basketball, volleyball, and American football. Within Cydalia, each sport has a designated national team for playing in the Merican Union's International Sports League (ISL), and each Cydalian district has its own team. Cydalia, much like it did pre-Collapse, tends to dominate in American football, with roughly 55% of all Merican Superbowl victories belonging to the Cydalian Patriots. The only team that generally gives the Cydalian Patriots a run for their money are the Minasotan Darwiishes. Compared to other nations in Merica, Cydalia does above average in baseball, average in hockey, and generally below average in basketball and volleyball.
Within Cydalia, the best hockey team is regarded to be the Qadian Bucherons, and the best baseball team is the Pittsfield Green Sox.
A popular maritime sport in Cydalia is boatball, in which individuals in kayaks are divided up into teams and attempt to hit a ball into the other team's goal.
Additionally, the military of Cydalia participates in "gladitorials," in which soldiers from various marine and navy units have mock gladitorial fights with foam weaponry. The Marine Corps and the Navy are divided up into teams respective of their military branch, with the team colors for each being green with red highlights for the marines, and blue with yellow highlights for the navy. Additionally, each regiment gets a tertiary color for more individual customization.
Holidays
Cydalia celebrates around 36 holidays, 26 public and 10 non-public. All holidays are planned out and coordinated by the Depahtment a Cultcha (Department of Culture) and generally fall into a religious or secular category. Important religious celebrations in Cydalia include St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Fete National, the night between All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, and Christmas. More minor religious holidays include feast days and Epiphany. These are generally marked by increased religious attendance, parades, family meals, and community gatherings.
Secular holidays that are popularly celebrated include Commonwealth Day, Grundsaudaag, Family Day, Foundation Day, Graduation Day, Ceasefire Day, and Sgennen. For national holidays that celebrate Cydalia's history such as Commonwealth, Ceasefire Day, and Foundation Day, massive celebrations are generally held. These include parades, parties, television performances, and more. More cultural holidays such as Grundsaudaag alongside University and Graduation Day are celebrated differently depending on region and town.
The largest holiday in Cydalia is Halloween. While Halloween pre-Collapse was generally only one day preceded by around a month of Halloween-themed cultural expressions, Halloween post-Collapse is a four day long celebration accompanied by the entire month of October (and in some parts, September) having a Halloween-themed cultural expression. Halloween is referred to as "Samhain" in Scosha. The Catholic Church in Cydalia refers to this time period as "Allhallowtide" or "Hallowtide." Regardless of what it is called, Halloween is generally celebrated in the same way around Cydalia. Starting around October 1st, many businesses and other establishments throughout Cydalia generally begin decorating themselves in oranges, blacks, purples, greens, and similar colors. Seasonal fall decorations such as pumpkins, maize and other types of corn, and caricatures of Halloween characters. Black cats, witches, jack-o-lanterns, skeletons, and more are hung up as well. Horror movies and other "scary" or "spooky" forms of media are consumed as well. The first week of October also coincides with Sgennen, meaning that people generally attempt to resolve personal conflicts with one another during this time. The rest of the month is spent in a buildup that eventually leads to the 31st of October, or the first day of Halloween. This day is celebrated throughout the nation, with parades, family gatherings, and parties being extremely common. At night, children and some adolescents generally partake in "trick-or-treating," or going house to house asking for candy. Consumption of soul cakes are also common.
Christmas
Easter
New Years/Commonwealth
Minor holidays
| Date | Name | Holiday | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 January | New Year's Day and Commonewalth Day |  |
Beginning of the new year and foundation of Cydalia's Commonwealth status. |
| 6 January | Epiphany | |
Feast day celebrating the visit of the Magi to Jesus Christ. |
| 2 February | Grundsaudaag |  |
Alternatively known as "Groundhog's Day" in Cydalian, or "Daks Day" in Scosha. |
| movable Monday in February | Family Day | |
Day celebrating the family as a whole. |
| Tuesday before Ash Wednesday | Fat Tuesday/Fastnacht | |
Day before Ash Wednesday. |
| movable Wednesday in February or March | Ash Wednesday | |
Beginning of Lent. |
| 17 March | St. Patrick's Day | |
Originally a celebration of Celtic Heritage, St. Patrick's day is now a religious holiday in Cydalia, celebrating the conversion of Cydalia to Catholicism. |
| day before Good Friday | Maundy Thursday | |
The day before Good Friday. |
| movable Friday in March or April | Good Friday | |
The Friday before Easter Sunday |
| movable Sunday in March or April | Easter Sunday | |
Easter Sunday |
| movable Monday in March or April | Easter Monday | |
The Monday after Easter Sunday |
| 17 April | Feast of St. Kateri Tekakwitha | |
Feast day of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Catholic Saint to come from Cydalian soil. |
| 19 April | Patriots' Day | |
Celebrating those who fought and died at the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy. |
| 22 April | Earth Day | |
Day in celebration of Earth and Nature. |
| April 28th | Foundation Day | |
Celebrating the foundation of the Cydalian nation. |
| 1 May | Labor Day | |
Celebration of all working Cydalians |
| 25 May | College Day | |
Day celebrating college students graduating. |
| 18 June | Graduation Day | |
Day celebrating high school students graduating. |
| 21 June | Summer's Solstice | |
|
| 24 June | Feast of St. John the Baptist (Fete National) | |
Qadian holiday, celebrating St. John the Baptist. |
| 2 July | Day Off | |
A day off. Implemented in 2310 by King Franklin II, because "We (Cydalians) don't get a lot of summer holidays." Eating donuts is common. |
| 3rd Monday in July | Farmer's Day | |
A day celebrating farmers and agricultural workers. |
| 2 August | Ceasefire Day | |
Celebrating the "Until Further Notice Ceasefire" treaty between Merican nations in the wake of the Collapse. |
| 1-6 October | Sgennen Preparation | |
Sgennen, or "Peace" in Iroquoian, is a holiday celebrating peace between people. |
| 7 October | Sgennen | |
Sgennen day celebrates peace between individuals and groups of people. Alternatively known as "Apology Day" or "Sorry Day." |
| 21 October | Feast Day of St. Karl of Europe | |
The Feast day of St. Karl von Habsburg of Europe. |
| 31 October - 3 November | Halloween (Samhain) | |
Halloween is the largest holiday in Cydalia outside of Christmas. Lasting only one day pre-Collapse, Cydalian Halloween or "Samhain" in Scosha lasts 4 days and is a nationwide festival with parties, parades, and religious events. |
| 1 November | All Saints' Day | |
Religious event during Halloween celebrating all Catholic Saints, known and unknown. |
| 2 November | All Souls' Day | |
Religious event during Halloween in remembrance of those who have died. |
| 11 November | Veterans' Day | |
Celebrates all veterans who fought or died for what is now Cydalia, from the pre-Colonial era to modern day. |
| Fourth Sunday in November | Thanksgiving | |
Celebrating peace between Natives and Colonial peoples. |
| 21 December | Yuul (Yule) | |
Celebration of the Winter Solstice |
| 24 December | Christmas Eve | |
Holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. |
| 25 December | Christmas Day | |
Alternatively known by some as Noel. |
| 26 December | Boxing Day | |
Originally a secular holiday, Boxing Day is now generally celebrated as an extension of Christmas. |
| 31 December | New Year's Eve and Commmonwealth Day | |
End of the old year and celebration of Cydalia's Commonwealth status. |