Teotiyolcan

Teotiyolcan Empire Hueyaltpetl Teotiyolcan
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Capital	Callinatlacan
Largest city	Teotialtecoyan
Official languages	Nahuallatolli
Demonym	Teotiyolcani
Government	Devolved Monarchy
• Huey Tlatoani	Tecuhuecapanoa
• Huey Cihuacoatl	Tlamatcayetoct
Area
• Total	268,000 km2
Population
• Estimate (2020)	31,624,000
HDI (2020)	0.74 high
Currency	Teocuitl (TCI)

Teotiyolcan is a country in the North Lycene region of Tarephia, and borders Valaga and TA101 to the east, Cote d'Or on the south, Soboko and the Magellan Confederation on the east, and TA103 in the north. It one of the few Lycene countries to have avoided colonization entirely, and has brought its culture, religion, and traditions into the modern age unencumbered by a colonial legacy. The empire was originally a loose confederation of city-states dominated by the Triple Cities, which are located in the north of the nation. Callinatlacan, the Holy City, became the capital of the nation as it centralized. The country was first encountered by the Franquese, who made a small settlement on the coast in 1408, before being driven out 68 years later in 1476. Castellan first made contact in 1510, planning to start a colony. The natives were able to negotiate, giving Castellan a favorable trading agreement with them in exchange for protection and the ability for some castellanese to settle in the country without fear, which has resulted in many castellanese settling in the south of the country, and that area has become the place with the most minority castellanese.

The triple cities urbanized and grew rapidly in the 1700s and especially the 1800s, with the rest of the country close behind. The Triple Cities are just over 20 million in population all together in the modern day, and are a very large metro area. The country has multiple other large cities, but none approach the size of the Triple City Metro Area, which dominates the country, nor do they exceed one million in population. The Triple cities are not highly wealthy, but still dense and populous. In the political sphere, the country, despite being highly expansionist prior to contact with the castellanese, with the military power of the triple cities taking control of numerous other city-states, it ceased to be militarily active on the borders in order to focus on defense, but did annex some border regions from Ingerish colonies in Valaga in the 1700s , which continues to cause tension today. The country has a HDI of .74, but many areas are poorer, and some are richer .

The government is still an Empire, who rules by divine mandate, but high-ranking government officials take on much of the actual governing duties. The Emperor is rarely involved in normal operations of government. The polytheistic religion is integrated into society, with very few atheists. Although human sacrifice was once an element of the religion, it was eliminated in the early 1400s. Religious festivals are still an important part of life. The geography of the country is marked by multiple large lakes and one major river that runs down the center of the country, and most of the others drain into it. The climate is warm and wet, with rainforest in the north and some remnants of rainforest in the central valley, and is drier in the central mountains.

History

Middle to Late Huapahuaca Dynasty and the Castellanese

The Ixpoliuhquamaxac.

The Franquese were the first settlers to arrive in the coastal region of Teotiyolcan, in 1408. Led by the Franquese captain Michel D’Herbert, who had discovered what is now Valaga a few years earlier, the Franquese expedition claimed much of the modern day altepetl of Tenamepetl, and founded a fort and small settlement, which they named Echez, after the count who had financed the expedition. The Franquese conducted expeditions into the interior, but these ended after contact with the Altepetl, who were violent towards the Franquese after a poor first impression. D’Herbert conducted two further expeditions towards the mouth of the Alvernes. He was unable to draw close to the land due to the immense mangrove forest that grows around the web of a delta on the north coast, known by Teotiyolcani as the “Ixpoliuhquamaxac” , or the intricate/confusing delta. After almost running aground when venturing too close to the shore, D’Herbert reluctantly elected to follow the coast from a distance. He did note, in a passage of his report on the coast that (translated) reads as:

“This devil coast seems almost unreachable. I noted what seemed to me as some islands of greater elevation, where perhaps a ship and her crew could find a place to settle.”

After sailing further towards the Alvernes, D’Herbert noticed the mouth of a large bay, which he thought might be the location of a native kingdom that the Tename paid tribute to. He was partially right, of course, and had he not been forced to turn around due to a combination of factors, history might be quite different. The Franquese colony in Echez was abandoned in 1476, and taken over by the Tename, who gave it the name of Contzenyoh.

Sketch of Lopez dated to around 1498.

The Castellanese were gearing up colonization efforts in the mid-1500s, after the success of the colonization in Latina and elsewhere in the Lyc. The north of the Lyc, although somewhat known from Franquese colonization efforts, was still in many respects unexplored, in particular the interior of the land there. As such, the Castellanese crown decided to bring it under Castellanese control.

It was under this atmosphere that Juan Manuel López began to undertake his infamous expedition to map the north coast of “El Brazo Oeste”. López (the son of Manuel Rafal López, an esteemed admiral) was a self described “conquistador”, who had from an early age been obsessed with expanding the christic religion to natives in Tarephia. He had become a captain in the Castellanese fleet in his late 20s, thanks to his father, and rapidly gained a reputation for being a strong-willed explorer and passionate christic. Upon learning of the cut-short Franquese expedition, he convinced the Castellanese king to fund an expedition to find the “hidden bay” and the rumored kingdom.

He left from Malgazan in Castellan on July 10 1552 with a fleet of two carracks and a smaller caravel, and would stop in Cabo Bonito, as well as the new settlements of Lucero and Barzona before seeing Contezenyoh in the distance on October 4th. Due to the reputation of the natives for violence, and acknowledging his weaker position, due to the fact that the Tename were armed with guns left behind from the Franquese, decided to continue onwards. On October 7th, he sighted the mangrove forests described by D’Herbert, and attempted to hug the shore, but ran into the shoal surrounding “La Isla Larga”, and nearly ran his ship (The Santa Octavia)  aground on the treacherous shoals. When attempting to cross through the small gap between La Isla Larga, he was struggling to prevent the ship from running aground - and then the tide began to go out, leaving the ship embedded into the tidal flat for two days until high tide enabled the one non-grounded carrack (The Marinero) to enter the tidal flat and quickly help pull out the Octavia and the Gaviota (the caravel). Sailing around the large island, López incorrectly assumed that the presence of this island meant that there was an error in the franquese maps, which he thought had incorrectly assumed the island was a peninsula. As such, he believed that the bay which would contain the kingdom of natives he so wished to find. The captain of the Marinero (Miguel Matinez), was doubtful, but López was insistent, and so the course began to be adjusted.

The Gaviota before the voyage, sketched by Juan Hernadez, the first mate.

The weather on the coast was highly foggy and wet at the time of the voyage, and had not yet reached its height. This lack of visibility contributed to the difficulty of López (who was normally far more capable of wayfinding) to accurately identify natural features. As they sailed into what Lopez named the “Bahia de López”, The Marinero ran aground on a shoal, and López elected to sail further into the bay, instructing the crew of the Marinero to try and settle in the Isla Larga.

Upon finding nothing at the end of the Bay aside from the entrances to the maze of the Ixpoliuhquamaxac, López, not yet dissuaded, decided that the civilization must lie further inland, and sending the Octavia back to the Marinero, decided to set out into the mangroves, where he believed he could find the kingdom. With a crew of his closest confidants on the Gaviota, he set off into the delta. The constant and heavy fog made it nearly impossible to see any more than a few meters off the side of the ship, and monkeys and mosquitos plagued the crew. López rapidly decided that it had been a horrible mistake to try and enter the mangroves, and despite finding evidence of some human habitation, there was nothing on the scale of the kingdom he had expected.

Ardea Lopez, or Lopez's Egret, first recorded by Lopez.

He elected to turn back, but rapidly found that the crew had absolutely no idea where they were, and the Gaviota became lost in the delta. After 15 days of wandering the delta, the Gaviota came out on the other side of the Isla Larga, and discovered multiple islands of higher elevation at the edge of the mangroves, which López marked with a red flag, planning to build a fort on the largest. López was by this time exhausted and fending off mutiny, and so returned to the two carracks. López would leave behind a small settlement on Isla Larga. He dubbed the coast, La Costa Diablo, “The Devil’s Coast”.

The next year, López returned to the coast significantly more prepared, with an additional carrack, the Obrigedo. He stopped for a month to begin the building of a wooden fort on the island he had marked, and left behind a contingent of settlers and soldiers who were to attempt to map the delta. López had convinced the governor to choose Mateo Lazulo to lead that expedition. This has been widely regarded as López’s revenge on Lazulo, as Lazulo had abused López’s daughter, his only living relative after his father died in 1548.

López continued down into the main bay, and encountered the altepetl of  Atoyatencuatl on May 26th, 1504.