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Too Busy To Notice
At the as-yet-unnamed colony, diUmbria walked, somewhat dazed, among the buildings- down fresh dirt roads soon to be cobbled, past shops and homes being raised brick by brick, timber by timber. Newly painted windows and doors spoke of industrious hands forming a new life in this incredible landscape. The population was just shy of two hundred souls now. He had come to be the sole director of the affairs of the colony. All of the resources had been his own, and all of the buildings had been surveyed and approved by the Venetian captain. To the end that his bank account was running lower and lower, by the millions then…
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A glimpse of Greenland
diumbria stood on deck a bit off-shore of Cayenne, after sailing south from the colony to tip of Florida, then west around the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. They passed seeing Veracruz, Merida, Maricaibo, Willemstad; all places that, in one way or another, he’d never even really conceived of. It was true, he knew, that Spain and Portugal, and even the Netherlands, had been colonizing the Caribbean and South America for years now; but the presence of it shocked him, to find European style buildings in so many parts of the new world. Still, the overall landscape was so wild. Everywhere he ventured in the wilderness, there was this…
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Finding Newfoundland
On the third return trip after founding the colony, diUmbria sails with a massive haul of stone and lumber for building more permanent buildings. The decision is made to hire a navigator out of Las Palmas for this trip, but it proves to be a terrible miscalculation; the inexperienced fool tacks west too early, directly into the strong headwinds that run east across the north atlantic. The mistake puts them against the wind for weeks. Food begins running low, but thankfully supplies were not exhausted by the time they reached Boston. After sailing down to the colony to supervise initial construction of an organized market, sail back north, past Boston,…
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The Edges of Africa
Africa hovered behind his eyes, a dream carried through the day. Its massive wildnerness called out to him, luring him with its uncharted mysteries. The Venetian Captain diUmbria had sailed to the wild continent many times of course. From when he was just starting out, south from the Adriatic; in those days he had feared the brutal pirates that roamed the waters around Tunis, Algiers, or Alexandria. When he had braved the Strait of Gibraltar he had soon turned south, like Hanno of old, and pushed his way as far as he dared. Little by little, to Arguin, to Sierra Leone, to Sao Tome- to the Cape itself, over…
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Sailing out to the Sunrise
There came a day when several seasoned explorers were gathered in a tavern in Seville. It was late in the evening, the day’s work done, and the conversation began to tilt to selecting their next endeavor. It was never certain, afterward, exactly whose idea planted the seed; but most would agree that it was Captain Kosevo that first suggested a voyage to far distant Edo. Some of the rest of the group included a weathered pirate, Captain Cyril, as well as the interepid explorer diUmbria and the wealthy merchant Juan Garrion. Soon enough they all seemed caught in an inexorible tide sweeping them across the world to Japan. In just…
est. Venice, 1752
