History of The Freethinkers
Contents
Discovery
Though there were numerous reports going back to the Middle Ages of lost ships being stranded and lost near a large desert continent in the middle of the Atlantic, (some of the Legends of Atlantis are based upon this, according to some scholars), the first confirmed sighting (and landing) occured on the 17th July, 1654 when an expedition seeking passage to South America from England came across the Northern shore of the Mainland, 'a lande barren and torne, a deserte seeminglie abandoned by the Lorde Himself,' the Captain of the expedition, Sir John Barham, noted in his Journal. After taking supplies and noting the location, the ship completed its voyage and then returned to England.
Immediately an expedition was mounted by the English (and soon enough the Spanish as well) to chart and then colonise this seemingly uninhabited island in a strategic point in the mid Atlantic. The first settlement, Pebble Landing (named after a natural harbour formed by a long arm of pebbles on the neighbouring shore), was founded by the English on the 1st June 1656, ( a date now celebrated as a national holiday in The Freethinkers), with Percival Debon as Governer. The first wave of immigrants themselves settled in and around Pebble Landing and the surrounding mountains, working a living from the limited farming and extensive fishing grounds avaliable. The desert-like weather and the horrendous mountain winter nearly ended the colonisation effort in the first few months, but a resilient, sometimes miraculous willingness to survive and, indeed, prosper secured a future for the fledging colonial enterprise.
The Spanish were not far behind, of course, and just before Christmas in the same year, the town of Navarre was also founded on the Northern Shores of theMainland, around two hundred miles from Pebble Landing. More and more colonists arrived from both nations, and eventually the tensions inherited from their mother nations plunged the colonists into an all-out war, latter known as the 'War Of The Mainland', in 1670. In order to preserve peace, England and Spain agreed not to help either side in order to maintain the balance of power in Europe at the time, despite misgivings in both countries, leaving the colonists to fight a series of brutal battles by themselves. Eventually, after a series of bloody, inconclusive battles, the English managed to gain an upperhand and went on the offensive, with the last Spanish troops surrendering Navarre on the 8th August 1672. The following Spring, after a half-hearted invasion attempt was stopped in its tracks on the high seas, Spain decided to concede all claims to the island to the English and concentrate on its more profitable south American possessions.
The New Arrivals
Despite the violent start, immigrants still arrived in droves. By 1700, the population had risen to half a million people, and large portions of the island had been charted and explored in some way through a series of dramatic land and sea expeditions that also uncovered many of the large, previously thought fantastical beasts that roamed the island's expansive interior. A network of roads had also been established between Navarre (made the main port and capital of the colony in 1675) and Pebble Landing, with many towns and villages spring up around the two main hubs to house the new populace.
Immigration to the islands, already high, was steadily increasing as well. Large amounts of land (although somewhat at the time considered fairly worthless), high civil and political rights by the standards of the day (including a newly established representative assembly in 1680), religious tolerance (though this was due more to the isolation-inducing geography and the difficulty of surviving in general which forced everyone to co-operate) and bountiful offshore fishing and newly discovered mineral stocks all attracted settlers from many different parts of the world, though many it had to be said from the mother-country of England. Another important event at the time worth noting, the indigenous vampires first came into contact (though disguised) with humans near Pebble Landing, according to their own oral history, though human sources do not note anything unusual for the same time period. Given the lack of an effective dating system in the vampire community of the era, the precise date of this 'first contact' is hard to determine.
Another important point was the colony's most important immigrants of the time, a large number of agnostics and freethinkers from the various Christian nations of Europe, attracted by the high levels of tolerance, and over time their numbers became so great they became the dominant individual group on the colony by the mid-Eighteenth century. Initially worried, many colonists began to try and place restrictions on the new arrivals, but to no avail. In the end, tolerance and mutual respect kept tensions from becoming too high, and the constant slurs from the respective 'Homelands' regarding the 'nation of the Freethinkers' were taken at their word, with the colony unofficially adopting the title in a show of defiance.
The Commonwealth
Colonisation continued. In terms of history for Mainland, little of international consequence happened over the course of the next hundred years. Immigration continued as before, the population reaching over 15 million by the end of the Eighteenth century. The nation began to finally exploit in earnest the abundant fishing stocks found in the offshore waters as well as making significant sums of money exploiting newly discovered (and other established) gold and silver reserves. Money was also, sadly, made off of the slave trade, with the city of Navarre especially being considered a top marketplace on the route from Africa to North America. Slavery was abolished in The Freethinkers only when the British Empire as a whole disbanded the slave trade in 1808.
Many new cities were established by this point. Port Blanche was established in 1777 on the closest point to Navarre on the Southern coast by French emigrees, and soon became one of the largest new settlements on the Mainland. Portanova, Ademsea, Benarbor and Delta City were all established by 1800. The road network was also extended and improved and work also began on the first extensive canal and irrigation schemes, setting an early precedent for the great Super-Engineering schemes of later centuries.
With the arrival of even more agnostics and other groups, especially at the end of the Eighteenth century, the colony of Mainland began to officially call itself The Freethinker Commonwealth in 1799 (for want of a better title, some contemprary observers noted). Derided in Christian communities because of this, the colony was nevertheless both an important strategic base and wealth generator for The British Empire, with surprising independence from the mother-country borne by the stability of the colony. The small Colonial Navy and Home Defence Militias had now both grown into a set of surprisingly powerful forces, forced to continually expand by the ever present risk of invasion and also the gargantuan task of simply patrolling the immensely large coastline and interior of the Mainland it self. After the official adoption of The Freethinker Commonwealth as the nation's title and with new autonomous powers granted to it by Britain,
In 1814 the Government of The Freethinker Commonwealth began to look at ways of expanding their territory further. Although the Freethinker Mainland was still mostly uncolonised, it was becoming obvious that there was only a certain number of people that the Freethinker Mainland|Mainland could support with the limited agricultural oppurtunities avaliable. It was decided that several expeditions would be mounted to acquire territory for The Freethinker Commonwealth]] in other parts of the world. Several expeditions, formed under the guidance of the Freethinker Royal Navy, were sent out in search of new islands and territories. Unfortunately, most ended unsuccessfully, with almost all the places visited either occupied by a colonial power, fierosciously independent, or simply economically unviable. All apart from one.
Fargon
Only July 2nd 1817, three ships under the command of Captain Johan Foster sighted land in the far North Atlantic. After having travelled through treacherous icefields for days on end, the crews were happy to make landfall. They were greeted by a small group of tribesmen of distant Inuit origin, who called the island Hacia after the local god of the seas. From the architecture of the camps and some of the words and weapons of the tribes, it is also believed by some that there were Viking visitors to the islands sometime in the distant past. Some agricultural, timber and fishing opportunities were avaliable to make a colony profitable
In keeping with traditional attitudes of the time however, the new of the landfall caused another expedition to settle the island and tame the natives. Although not as horrendous as the almost genocidal European colonisation and American expansion, nonetheless the islanders tranquil exsistence was shattered by a rapid imperial colonisation effort that was almost breath-taking in its speed. Fargon City was founded in 1820, and the entire Fargon Archipelago was charted and mapped within five years. In turn, although, unlike in some other places, there was no dedicated effort to destroy the Hacian's way of life, the lore of Western culture and advancement and the zealous efforts of missonaries and merchants had nearly wiped all traces of their original heritage and cultural makeup away. Only a dedicated effort by some of the more isolated communities on the Archipelago saw the culture survive at all, though it gained a notable rebirth in recent times as Fargoni nationalism rose in significant popularity.
Unfortunately over the next hundred years the treatment of the Fargon natives, and even the colonists of the Fargon Archipelago themselves, found that they were being malaigned and neglected by the rest of The Freethinker Commonwealth and its Government. Considered inhospitable and backward by the end of the next century, the colony found itself falling further and further behind the advancement of the rest of the Freethinker nation. This second rate treatment eventually, in the far future, lead to what can be called the closest thing to civil war to happen in The Freethinker Commonwealth.
Federation and Expansion
However, the Fargoni problems lay in the future at the middle of the Nineteenth century. At the height of British Imperial power, the Mainland's bases and shipyards, including the recently founded were overflowing with work and material, prompting a mass emigration to the main cities from Europe and Asia. The multicultural aspect of Freethinker society stems from this period, the attitudes of the administration and the populace considerably more friendly than that of other high-immigration nations
