Storyteller
11:38pm, June 16, 2015
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I. Caribbean
The native peoples of the Caribbean islands were known as the Taino and Island Caribs. The arrival of Europeans to the West Indies had a devastating effect on them. The diseases these settlers and invaders brought with them - which the indigenous population had no immunities to - brought widespread death and despair onto these native communities. A smallpox epidemic in 1518 on the island of Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic) is said to have killed 90% of the native Taino. Brutal slavery and warfare effectively decimated these cultures and very few are left in the present day. Both peoples mixed with the settlers and the slaves later imported from the West Coast of Africa. For the Taino, who are largely thought extinct due to the ravages of disease, their blood lives on through these descendants. The practices and collective magickal knowledge of their shaman and priests are either lost, forgotten, or the Dreamspeakers and Verbena who once counted the Taino and Island Caribs among their number have no plans to share what they know, if anything, with the other Traditions. It is claimed that the few remaining Awakened Caribs and Taino, despondent at the quintessential apocalypse brought on their people, retreated into the Umbra. Everything from hurricanes to earthquakes have been attributed to the wrath and vengeance of these lost and phantom Caribbean Indian willworkers. The Avatar Storm that ravaged the Umbra has put to rest these tall tales in recent nights. Whatever revenge that may have been building in the depths of the Umbra can only be considered the fanciful wish of a bitter, impassioned but misguided few. The gods and spirits of the Taino are said to still find communion and worship in parts of South America and the gods of the Caribs, much like the Caribs themselves, have largely been supplanted from their thrones and home by foreign interlopers, primarily in the form of Catholicism.
European explorers and settlers came to the West Indies largely out of imperial aspirations. All came for a multitude of reasons; some for power, some due to having no choice in the matter, others to spread their righteous God.
It was only natural for the Hermetic storm-wizards of House Tharsis, known for their mastery of the sea, to spread their influence into the West Indies. Barbados, Havana, Port Royal, and later Kingston all provided perfect depots for their operations and exploration of the New World. Civil War in England, Cromwellian victories, and the regicide of Charles I hastened the arrival of mages from the Order of Hermes into the Caribbean lest suffer the same fate as their courtier brethren. Mighty House Flambeau followed their brothers in the exploits of the Hapsburg Spanish Empire, coming into conflict with House Tharsis when treasure fleets were harassed, sank, or looted by privateers the storm-wizards openly associated with (and even joined). Not only was gold prized but stores of raided tass and the stolen artifacts, fetishes, wonders, and talismans of the Mages of the New World were highly sought. A portion of these empowered items have been returned to Caribbean Dreamspeaker and Verbena groups in the interest of reconciliation and unity among the Traditions in recent times. Curiously, fabled tokens of power are still missing, said to be lost or destroyed, European Traditions either genuinely do not what happened to them in lieu of chantries falling and the aftermath of the Avatar Storm or are purposely feigning ignorance.
The Maroons...
The Bahamas - First occupied by a branch of Taino peoples, Spain shipped them to Hispaniola and into slavery, leaving the islands vacant until English colonization. It was the future site of the infamous "Pirate's republic", where notorious rogues such as Charles Vane, Sam Bellamy, Stede Bonnet, Mary Read, Calico Jack Rackham, and Edward Teach, also known as "Blackbeard", made their home. The War of Spanish Succession brought a combined Franco-Spanish fleet to attack Nassau in 1703 and again in 1706, which left the island effectively abandoned by many of its settlers and with no government presence. It became a hub for English privateers, who harried French and Spanish fleets and were attacked in return. By 1713 the War of the Spanish Succession was over, but many British privateers were slow to get the news, or reluctant to accept it, and slipped into piracy. Swaths of now unemployed privateers made their way to join the 'republic' and swell its numbers. Woodes Rogers soon arrived in the Bahamas in 1718 to act as governor and suppressed piracy in the region. Many pirates either we pardoned by ceasing their criminal activity or were caught by the Royal Navy and Pirate Hunters and later hung and gibbeted.
Young Ecstatics love to lay claim to the staples of the Republic of Pirates as their own; highlighting their championing a lust for life, the freedom and liberty shared between men and women regardless of race or origin, unbridled by the standards of their time, and fighting the good fight against an agent of the Order of Reason played by Woodes Rogers. Whether any of the cast in the Golden Age of Piracy were Awakened is uncertain, just as the debate whether they were heroes or merely rotten, heartless scoundrels is equally and as fiercely argued. Regardless the short life of the Pirate's republic serves as a lesson to the Mages of modern times. A reminder to the struggles of the truly free against the tightening death-grip of order and control, currently enforced by the Technocratic Union. Yet also the folly of unchecked debauchery and the disunity among the Awakened when left to chase selfish ambitions and avarice that inevitably paves the way to ruin.
The conclusion of the American Revolutionary War saw many Loyalists move to the Bahamas, bringing their slaves with them. When the British, and later Americans, abolished the slave trade, the Royal Navy intercepted slave ships and many of liberated slaves were resettled in the Bahamas. The Seminole Wars in Florida also saw hundreds of escaped slaves and Black Seminoles flee to the islands.
Today, the Bahamas is one of the richest countries in the Americas.
Cayman Islands - Tax haven for financial elite. Without a doubt the Syndicate convention of the Technocratic Union has sway here.
Montserrat - Anti-Catholic violence on the island of Nevis caused many Irish forced to the Caribbean as indentured servants to establish a colony on the island of Montserrat.
With the Irish came their faith, their Awakened naturally gravitating towards the cause of the Celestial Chorus. The Aided Sect of the Euthanatoi have found a home on Montserrat and the Caribbean in general. The Filidh faction in particular ardently watch over their Irish (or "Redleg") communities, employing their protective magick and weathcrafting to counter the hard trials of West Indies life.
In 1995, the Soufrière Hills volcano erupted in the southern part of the island and destroyed the capital of Plymouth. Two-thirds of the population evacuated the island. Theories are abound among local Mages as to the cause of the previously dormant volcano erupting. Some say it was a ritual gone awry, others talk conspiracy of a Technocratic experiment, while whispers sometimes crop up about Nephandi purposely shrouding the island in ash and smoke to hide a nefarious and mysterious purpose.
II. Barbados
The English were the first to colonize the island of Barbados but not the first to stake claim to it. Initially settlers grew tobacco in replication of the success the crop had in the Chesapeake colony however it did not grow as well. Akin to the North American colonies, manpower was a problem and indentured servants were brought to act as labor with the promise of provisions and land of their own upon completion of their contract. However, given how small the island was, allotments of land were not tenable. Rich landowners ended up purchasing land from smaller landowners to create vast plantations. Oliver Cromwell was known to send Royalists, prisoners, and criminals to the West Indies as indentured servants, essentially utilizing the distant islands as a penal colony and means of exile. Following Cromwell's wars in Ireland, many Irish and Catholic prisoners suffered this fate, in what became to be known as being "Barbadosed". Tropical diseases were quick to kill most new arrivals to the New World and the cost of bringing new indentured servants was expensive. A new source of labor was found elsewhere, one that could be brought cheaply in comparison and whose service was lifelong, namely in the form of slaves transported from Africa.
III. Bridgetown
IV. Lighthouse
Bathshebaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Edited 4:06pm, May 09, 2017 by Narrator, moderative. |
