Big ol' Newosweik seen from space.
Newosweik is a planet a couple light years away from ours. Even though the people who inhabit it don't agree on the exact location, some saying that it's near Alpha Centauri and others claiming that the constellations point towards somewhere in the Big Dipper, only one thing is certain: it's a freaking long distance away from Earth. Newosweik's population derives mainly from 21st century colonizers that were sucked in by some vortex or something and were forced to make a home somewhere else, far away from the Old Terra and all it's trouble. The thing they didn't realise is that, well, humans tend to bring it everywhere they go.
Etymology[]
The name Newosweik is bad PIE (Proto-IndoEuropean) for 'new village'. People had been settling for a while but the name for the planet only truly caught on when some linguist suggested the idea. His intention was to give at least something that would remind them of the fact that they all came from Earth and had a common origin, but he forgot that many people that colonized this planet weren't even of IndoEuropean origin, making the name a bit too Eurocentric.
The Arrival of People[]
During the late 21st century, many scientists conjectured, tried to explain why mass disappearances of people thorought history have occured, where people vanish without a trace. Little did they know that this was because these groups of people somehow ended up on another planet somewhere else in the universe. And this had been going on for quite a while, because on the planet remains of neolithic-like civilizations can be found in some places, and way even before that, many animals and plants made their home on this planet.
But...
It doesn't matter why they got there, for there's no explanation, but what this story is about is WHAT people did once they settled there.
Geography[]
Flat projection of Newosweik showing both hemispheres.
Solar System[]
Newosweik orbits a yellow-orange sun two thirds the size of ours at a distance similar to Venus' orbit around our sun. The year is 386.4 days of 22.4 hours and the planet spins at a slightly less tilted angle than Earth. There is less seasonal variation.
read more: Newosweik solar system
Newosweik has two moons of roughly the size of Pluto that orbit it at around half the distance the moon does from our planet. One of the moons always faces Newosweik with only one face while the other that orbits a bit further away does not.
Composition and size[]
Similar physically to Earth, Newosweik is 95% of the mass of Earth but has a diameter 105% percent of Earth's. This means that things weigh slightly less on Newosweik. The lesser density is due to the fact that the mantle seems to be of a lighter and more liquid material. The main theory explaining this is that the planet itself is geologically much younger than Earth (about a quarter), so that the core must be hotter, taking up more volume. The planet is more tectonically active than Earth, with average plate movement reaching 10 cm a year (about the movement of one of the fastest Earth plates, the IndoAustralian one). Coastlines and rifts indicate that roughly 100 million years ago all continents were joined together but separated quite rapidly. There are 6 or 7 (depends on who you ask) continents on Newosweik, of which some display some high mountain ranges that were formed during Pangea while others are from later development.
Climate[]
Geological map of Newosweik.
Around 75% of the surface is covered in oceans and lakes. In contrast to Earth, seas in Newosweik are much less saltier and in some rare cases can be drinkable although locals will often tell you not to risk it. As there is less continental mass near the poles and the climate is generally warmer than the terrestrial counterparts, the icecaps on Newosweik are much smaller and thinner and tend to fluctuate a lot more than *here*. The coldest temperature recorded is at the north pole, reaching minus 15 degrees Celsius. Tropical areas are seasonally hit by hurricanes of comparable force to the terrestrial ones, making a few coastal regions both sides of the tropics nearly uninhabitable. The sun rises in the east and winds to blow more towards the west coasts of land masses.
History[]
(This explains a small fraction of the whole thing. For the history as a whole, see History of Newosweik)
Early settling[]
The continent of Nueva Tierra was among the first places man set his foot on upon landing on Newosweik.
On a specific period of time a great number of people appear on the north bay of a continent that would be dubbed by them 'Nueva Tierra' (how original). They were most likely bewildered by the fact that they were somewhere other than home and seeing the native wildlife of this planet gave them a shock. (See more below on the biology of Newosweik). The first years of settling are characterized by strenuous work and little free time as people look for sources of food, assess dangers of the place, do reconnaissance of the continent and build their homes. Scanty written records from this time survive to this day.
Cultural Formations[]
While during the first 100 years or so people struggled to rebuild society as they knew it, cultural divisions appeared where people from different origins mixed.
Given time, people realised that they would definitely want to expand their territories but with one thing in mind: they did not want to 'build' countries. From what people remembered about Old Earth, nations were often the cause of wars, famine, inequality and many things they saw as bad. This meant that the settlements, as they grew, did not form nations, but something more akin to palaeolithic 'territories' or 'cultures', loosely defined confederations where a common language was normally spoken. These loosely defined by fuzzy boundaries and with time many separate cultures formed.
Blue= English-speaking settlements. Purple: Spanglish. Red/Orange: Spanish. Pink: Japanese/Spanish settlements.
The time it took for these cultural differences to create these natural boundaries is thought to range between 50 and 200 years.
During this time, the people already knew which plants were okay for consumption and which weren't, and a fishing industry had arisen, where people next to the coasts would sell fish and exotic sea creatures that didn't exist on Earth to the people higher inland, who would provide them with whatever kind of fruit existed inland. Even though not much writing survives from these years, the evidence still exists in the form of fishing nets, instruments and much later, through metal artefacts, as Newosweikians started developing economies and industries. A large increase of population among all humans on Nueva Tierra occured later because of this industrial boom.
The Wave and the First Nations[]
As people started getting used to their new homeland, a subduction zone on a continent just north created shook the earth with a power of around 9.5 in the Richter scale. The waves travelled and before anyone could be warned, impacted on the Central Bay of Tierra Nueva, sweeping clean vast stretches of lowlands. Collectively, the death toll rose to around 25% percent of the entire continent's population, according to the scanty information from that age, the main reason being that settlements were too close to the ocean and it happened during the night when people were sleeping. This event is often referred to as The Wave triggered a set of events. As huge effort was needed to reach people affected by the natural disaster, several provisional committees were formed in an improvised manner around several areas to handle the crisis better, creating the precursors to actual governments.
Even though people still did not want countries forming, they had little choice: they needed to act quickly and in an organized manner, by having a central authority manage the crisis the tsunami had wreaked. These central governments also worked towards stopping neighbouring groups from pillaging their land and in the long term caused the building of borders between each peoples. Naturally, the locking of territories caused neighbouring territories to do the same in fear that they would be claimed by other people. Hence nations were born.
Long term causes of the tsunami apart from the forming of nations was a sudden urge to colonize Nueva Tierra and expand, an acceleration of the language change between the peoples and also conflict over territory. This inevitably led the countries on Nueva Tierra at odds with eachother over land and resources, giving way to wars.
While the people in this continent settled and then decided to explore the rest of the world, other people already lived in some other parts, and eventually made contact with them, sometimes violently.
Biology[]
Newosweik's wildlife is tremendously varied and by human standards, bizarre.
Example of a Shrub Octopus in it's natural environment
However, life on Newosweik is much like Earth's because of the fact that all life on it derives from animals that live or lived on Earth during this last geologic age, along with tons of plants, towards the barren rock that Newosweik was before their arival. By the time humans got there (I can't imagine how long), life had sprouted, evolved to fill in all the niches available and turned into things never seen on Earth.
One notable family of species of Newosweikian life are the 'Terracephalopods', descendants of the Squids and Octopuses that have managed to find a home in humid forests and evolve on their own accord.
While new species are constantly being discovered, it seems that humans have been putting pressure on the ecosystem on Newosweik in a way similar to that they used to back on Old Earth.