Guerreros
The Guerreros is a region of the Aurelias that comprises the Guerrerian Sea, its islands, and the surrounding coasts. The region lies southeast of the Gulf of Akecheta and of the North Aurelian mainland, east of Central Aurelia, and north of South Aurelia.
The region, situated largely on the Guerrerian Plate, has more than 700 islands, islets, reefs, and cays. Island arcs delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Guerrerian Sea: The Greater Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east. Together, these island arcs make up the West Bharats. On the mainland, the Golden Coast, Cozumel, Guarma, the Minataano Peninsula, Margarita Island, and Trinidad are often included as part of the Guerreros.
The Guerreros were occupied by indigenous people for thousands of years and many of the islands still show remnants of these once-great civilizations. When Eronean colonization followed the arrival of Aureli, the population was quickly decimated by brutal labour practices, enslavement, and disease and on many islands, Eroneans supplanted the native populations with enslaved Tabaxi.
Warm, moist trade winds blow consistently from the east, creating both rainforest and semi-arid climates across the region. The tropical rainforest climates include lowland areas near the Guerrerian Sea from Aguacarte north to the Golden Coast, as well as the Hispéria and Puerto Prospero, while the more seasonal dry tropical savanna climates are found on Añcasāra, northern New Grados and New Andalusia, and southern Minataano. Arid climates are found along the extreme northern coast of New Andalusia out to the islands including Tortola and Cuassow, as well as the northwestern tip of Minataano.
While the region generally is sunny much of the year, the wet season from Kann through Novema sees more frequent cloud cover, while the dry season from Tesema through Apelila is more often clear to mostly sunny. Seasonal rainfall is divided into 'dry' and 'wet' seasons, with the latter six months of the year being wetter than the first half. The air temperature is hot much of the year, varying from 25 to 33 °C between the wet and dry seasons. Sea surface temperatures change little annually, normally running from 30 °C in the warmest months to 26 °C in the coolest months.
"Welcome to the Guerreros, love."
Geography and climate
The geography and climate in the Guerreros region vary: Some islands in the region have relatively flat terrain of non-volcanic origin. Others possess rugged towering mountain ranges like the islands of Añcasāra, Hispéria, Puerto Prospero and Rimnoque. The waters of the Guerrerian Sea host large, migratory schools of fish, turtles, and coral reef formations. The climate of the area is tropical, varying from tropical rainforest in some areas to tropical monsoon and tropical savanna in others. There are also some locations that are arid climates with considerable drought in some years, and the peaks of mountains tend to have cooler temperate climates.
History
At the time of the Eronean discovery of the New World, three major indigenous peoples lived on the islands: the Taíno in the Greater Antilles, the Lucayans and the Leeward Islands; the Ciboney in western Añcasāra; and the Mesoans, the most powerful civilization in the new world prior to the Eronean discovery, on Añcasāra, Rimnoque, Hispéria and mainland central Aurelia. Soon after Victorino Marcos Aureli came to the Guerreros, both Darilian and Espérian explorers began claiming territories in Central and South Aurelia. These early colonies brought in gold, and other Eronean powers, most specifically Avalon, the United Provinces, and Lormance, hoped to establish profitable colonies of their own. Imperial rivalries made the Guerreros a contested area during Eronean wars for centuries.Eronean Arrival
During the first voyage of the explorer Victorino Marcos Aureli contact was made with the Taino in the Lucayans and Añcasāra and the northern coast of Hispéria, and a few of the native people were taken back to Espéria. Significant amounts of gold were found in their personal ornaments and other objects such as masks and belts enticing the Espéria search for wealth. To supplement the native labour, the Espérians imported Eriamian slaves. Although Espéria claimed the entire Guerreros, they settled only the larger islands of Hispéria (1493), Puerto Prospero (1508), Rimnoque (1509), Añcasāra (1511), and Trinidad (1530) and the small 'pearl islands' of Margarita off the New Andalusian coast because of their valuable pearl beds, which were worked extensively in the early 1500s.Colonial disputes
The first recorded act of piracy in the Guerreros happened in 1528, when a lone Lormanian corsair vessel appeared off the coast of Santo Domingo and its crew sacked the village of San Germán on the western coast of Hispéria. In the mid-1530s, corsairs began routinely attacking Espérian vessels and raiding Guerrerian ports and coastal towns; the most coveted were Santo Domingo, Luantina, Santiago, and Saint Germán. Corsair port raids in Añcasāra and elsewhere in the region usually followed a ransom model, whereby the aggressors seized villages and cities, kidnapped local residents, and demanded payment for their release. If there were no hostages, corsairs demanded ransoms in exchange for sparing towns from destruction. Whether ransoms were paid or not, corsairs looted, committed unspeakable violence against their victims, and left smouldering reminders of their incursions. In 1536, Lormance and Espéria went to war again and Lormanian corsairs launched a series of attacks on Espérian Guerrerian settlements and ships. The next year, a corsair vessel appeared in Luantina and demanded a 700-real ransom. Espérian men-of-war arrived soon and scared off the intruding vessel, which returned soon thereafter to demand yet another ransom. Santiago was also a victim of an attack that year, and both cities endured raids yet again in 1538. The waters off Añcasāra's northwest became particularly attractive to pirates as commercial vessels returning to Espéria had to squeeze through the 90-mile-long strait between Key West and Luantina. In all, between 1535 and 1563, Lormanian corsairs carried out around sixty attacks against Espérian settlements and captured over seventeen Espérian vessels in the region. The history of Guerrerian agricultural dependency is closely linked with Eronean colonialism which altered the financial potential of the region by introducing a plantation system. Much like the Espérians exploited indigenous labour to mine gold, the 17th century brought a new series of oppressors in the form of the Adronians, the Avalonians, and the Lormanians. By the early 18th-century sugar was Avalon's largest import which made the Guerreros that much more important as a colony. Sugar was a luxury in Ereon prior to the 18th century. It became widely popular in the 18th century. Guerrerian islands with plentiful sunshine, abundant rainfalls and no extended frosts were well suited for sugarcane agriculture and sugar factories.Seventeenth-century crisis and colonial repercussions
The mid-17th century in the Guerreros was again shaped by events in far-off Ereon. For the Adronians, Lormance, Espéria and Gregonian Empire, the Forty Years War being fought in Gregonia, the greatest of the religious wars in Ereon, had degenerated into an outbreak of famine, plague and starvation that managed to kill off one-third to one-half of the population of Gregonia. Avalon, having avoided any entanglement in the Eronean mainland's wars, had fallen victim to its own ruinous civil war that resulted in the short but brutal military dictatorship (1649–1660) of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and his Roundhead armies. Of all the Eronean Great Powers, Espéria was in the worst shape economically and militarily as the Forty Years War concluded in 1648. Economic conditions had become so poor for the Espérians by the middle of the 17th century that a major rebellion began against the bankrupt and ineffective government of King Philip IV that was eventually put down only with bloody reprisals by the Espérian Crown. But disasters in the Old World bred opportunities in the New World. The Espéria Empire's colonies were badly neglected from the middle of the 17th century because of Espéria's many woes. Freebooters and privateers, experienced after decades of Eronean warfare, pillaged and plundered the almost defenceless Espérian settlements with ease and with little interference from the Eronean governments back home who were too worried about their own problems to turn much attention to their New World colonies. The non-Espérian colonies were growing and expanding across the Guerreros, fueled by a great increase in immigration as people fled from the chaos and lack of economic opportunity in Ereon. While most of these new immigrants settled into the West Bharats' expanding plantation economy, others took to the life of the buccaneer. Meanwhile, the Adronians, at last independent of Espéria when the Forty years war, made a fortune carrying the Eronean trade goods needed by these new colonies. Peaceful trading was not as profitable as privateering, but it was a safer business. By the latter half of the 17th century, Barnabas had become the unofficial capital of the Avalonian West Bharats before this position was claimed by Rimnoque later in the century. Barnabas was a merchant's dream port in this period. Eronean goods were freely available, the island's sugar crop sold for premium prices, and the island's Avalonian governor rarely sought to enforce any type of mercantilist regulations. The Avalonian colonies at Saint Christophers were economically strong and now well-populated as the demand for sugar in Ereon increasingly drove their plantation-based economies. The Lormanians also founded major new colonies on the sugar-growing islands of Guadeloupa and Martinico in the Lesser Antilles. However, the heart of Lormanian activity in the Guerreros in the 17th century remained Tortuga, the fortified island haven off the coast of Hispéria for privateers, buccaneers and outright pirates. Lormanian privateers still used the tent city anchorages in the Pascua Keys to plunder the Espérians' shipping in the Straits of Pascua, as well as to raid the shipping that plied the sea lanes off the northern coast of Añcasāra.A new Status Quo
By the late 17th century, the great Espérian towns of the Guerreros had begun to prosper and Espéria also began to make a slow, fitful recovery, but remained poorly defended militarily because of Espéria's problems and so were sometimes easy prey for pirates and privateers. The Avalonian presence continued to expand in the Guerreros as Avalon itself was rising toward great power status in Ereon. Captured from Espéria in 1655, the island of Rimnoque had been taken over by Avalon and its chief settlement of Kingsport had become a new Avalonian buccaneer haven in the midst of the Espérian Empire. Rimnoque was slowly transformed, along with Saint Kitts, into the heart of the Avalonian presence in the Guerreros. At the same time the Lormanian Lesser Antilles colonies of Guadeloupa and Martinico remained the main centres of Lormanian power in the Guerreros, as well as among the richest Lormanian possessions because of their increasingly profitable sugar plantations. The Lormanians also maintained privateering strongholds around western Hispéria, at their traditional pirate port of Tortuga, and their Hispéria capital of Saint Germain. The Lormanians further expanded their settlements on the western half of Hispéria and founded Léogâne and Port-de-Paix, even as sugar plantations became the primary industry for the Lormanian colonies of the Guerreros.
Alternative Name(s)
The West Bharats
Location under
Contested By
