Colonization of Leifria and Vanaheim (Fidem Pacis)

The continents of Leifria and Vanaheim, sometimes collectively known as the New World, have only been known of in the Old World for the last thousand years. The first confirmed contacts took place around the turn of the millenium, with a series of Norse voyages to the coast of Vinland including an aborted attempt at settlement, but regular exchanges did not resume until the early 14th century when Bishop Álfur Þórsson brought a few hundred surviving Greenlanders south to establish a new home on the continental mainland.

Norwegian Vinland
Prior to their exodus, the Greenlanders had not forgotten Vanaheim completetely. There had always been the occasional fishing boat blown off course that ended up reaching the mainland, and it had become a tradition to, every once in a lifetime, sail the fleet south to gather lumber - trees being very rare in Greenland itself. The result was that the Greenlanders had already managed to establish reasonably good relations with the native Beothuk people of Vinland.

Initially the refugees headed for Leifsbudir, where the sagas told that Leif Ericsson had first landed. However, they found the region already occupied by Beothuk. Instead the natives told the Greenlanders of a natural harbour thirty miles down the coast, sheltered from the ocean and set in an exceedingly fertile land, and so it was at Straumfjörð that Álfur Þórsson built his settlement in 1377.

When word eventually filtered back to Norway, along with ships full of the material rewards, King Haakon VI rewarded Álfur by making him bishop and governor of Vinland and sending him a dozen boatloads of settlers to expand the new town. Within a few decades there were flourishing Norse settlements all along the coasts of Vinland and Markland, and other European nations had begun their own voyages of exploration to the New World.

Welsh Vinland
Wales was one of the first nations to explore the New World. In 1390 Jean de Béthencour, a Lyonnaise navigator in the service of the Welsh court, led a voyage to the coast of Vanaheim where he traded with the Penobscot, Wampanoad and Mohican people.

However, the first Welsh settlements did not begin until the 1450s, when the colonies of New Cambria and New Ebrauc were first established. As they grew they found themselves blocked by the Norwegian colonies of the Great Canada River, forcing further expansion to be focused further south in New Scilly or in the southern continent of Leifria. When Wales and Norway were brought together into a Union of Crowns, their colonies also formed a strong alliance that lasted until the creation of the Dominion of Vinland in 1867.

Guatemala
The Yucatan region of South Vanaheim was the home of the Maya peoples, whose kingdoms were still powerful even though their empire had collapsed centuries before. In 1412 Rodrigo de Monroy, accompanied by 2,000 riflemen and cavalry, landed on the peninsula with the intention of conquering the Maya for Aquitaine.

Using a mixture of armed force and diplomacy, Monroy turned the Maya kingdoms against each other and conquered them one by one. Many atrocities are recorded from this period, which became known as the Rape of Yucatan, but after the war was over Aquitaine had a new province which it called Guatemala.

Around this time Monroy heard of the wealth and splendour of the fledgeling Mexica Triple Alliance not far to the west, where many defeated Mayans had fled to bolster the Aztec ranks. In 1425 Monroy attacked the Mexica, forming an alliance with numerous other Nahuatl city-states, but despite initial successes he was defeated and sacrificed at the Siege of Tenochtitlan after the Mexica had acquired Chinese-made guns.

Guatemala rose up in rebellion as soon as the news spread, and it took decades for Acquitaine to subdue it once more.