Ireland

Ireland is one of the founding members of the United Kingdoms as well as the former overlord of Brittany, led by the House of Callahan. The Kingdom of Ireland claims domain over the entire island of Eire, as well as Cuba, the Canary and Azores islands, and other territories in North America. The King, as of 1644, is His Majesty King Micheal, 3rd son of the former King, the late King Paul.

The Great Unification and the Founding of the Kingdom
In 1450, the island of Eire was divided among numerous tribes and clans warring for supremacy, and there were also English claims to the central-eastern coast of Ireland, often known as the Pale. However, that all began to change. The leader of the Clan Callahan, Quentin, based out of Ulaidh (Ulster), put into effect a plan he'd had for years to unite the island.

Taking advantage of the English desire to secure willing soldiers for their war with the French, and a Scottish desire to have a powerful ally to help counterbalance the English, the Chieftain made a pact with the Kingdoms. In exchange for an agreement to send Irish troops to serve as mercenaries for the English for 100 years, and a general pact of defense between both the Scottish and the English, they would assist him in uniting Eire. England ceded the Pale to him, and both powers sent modern weapons and troops to help him entice nearby clans into willingly swearing fealty to Clan Callahan.

With most of the North peacefully absorbing into Ulaidh, and the stubborn tribes to the immediate south being forcefully annexed, Quentin made his declaration to the world in 1458: The Kingdom of Ireland, with his dynasty at the head, was now claiming sovereignty over all of Eire. All Irish tribes that recognized his claim as their rightful king would be given a favorable position in the new order. All who rejected would be forcefully crushed. With this revelation much of the remaining southern half of the Island swore fealty, but Clan Desmond southeast and their allies to the west and northwest, instead put forth Desmond as the rightful ruler of Ireland. And so, with English cannons and Scottish soldiers, the army of King Quentin invaded Desmond. In 1463, the former Chieftain surrendered. As punishment for their resistance, all ruling and supporting clans were stripped of their lands, with them being redistributed between the royal family and supporters of Clan Callahan. All male members were tracked down with extreme prejudice and executed. All females were married off into loyal clans. By 1466, Eire was firmly under the foot of the new King.

The Quiet Century
In the hundred or so years after the Unification of Ireland, the various kings focused inward, trying desperately to bring the backwards tribal nation up to the standards of its European neighbors. With a small population, poorly developed lands, and a navy and military almost a century behind the cutting edge, the fledgling kingdom was weak and vulnerable. It became a project of every successive king to perform the same tasks; improve birth rates, get more people to move into the market towns in an attempt to make bigger cities and trade centers, build a larger navy, and getting more and more of Ireland's natural resources out onto the open seas for trade.

Although their service in the Hundred Years War earned them control over Brittany, Ireland was still tiny in the grand scheme. However, Ireland had finally made a lasting mark on the world: The colonization of the New World. Landing in Newfoundland in 1482, over the next 130 years, Ireland would paint the eastern coast down to North Carolina green, albeit with English and Scottish assistance.

Brittany, once directly ruled by the Irish King, was officially reformed as the Kingdom of Brittany in 1495, partially due to the difficulties of ruling a foreign land, but largely because King Peter did not believe it was Ireland's place to oppress a sovereign people, citing the English oppression of the Pale as justification. They lived as vassals under Eire for the next 38 years, until they were officially freed for faithful service and loyalty. Due to this hands-off nature to their control over Brittany, Ireland enjoys fantastic relations with them to this day.

The Sunset War

Placeholder text for the 125 years war

The Cult of the Great Old Ones: The Heretic King of Ireland
Ireland had long been Catholic, the vast majority of its original pagan traditions and beliefs eradicated a millennium before by the various missionaries and priests sent to the island. King Quentin was no exception to this, and was devoted to the God of Abraham and the Son of God, Jesus Christ, as was befitting a man who commanded the pious new nation. However, around the late 1460s, he is often believed to have had doubts about the Abrahamic God being the only one. He reportedly sought out information on the old gods, not just of the old Gaelic deities and spirits, but of the ancient Hellenistic gods, the remnants of the Norse pantheon, the various faiths of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, and even a few scattered descriptions of old African tribal faiths that were not entirely wiped out by the rise of Islam.

This all culminated in the infamous declaration he made in 1478; claiming to have had a vision, Callahan denounced Christianity, proclaiming not only that the Abrahamic God and Jesus Christ were not the only divine beings in existence, but that they merely part of a massive collection of gods, and were not the greatest of them all, but in fact weak compared to many beings. Some of these entities, called "Great Old Ones" by Quentin, were constantly at risk of entering the realm of the mortals in all of their true power, destroying all the world. The only way to sate them, Quentin said, was to worship them with blood sacrifice, revelry, orgies and bizarre sexual rituals, and other forms of debauchery.

The reaction he received was, as expected, one of total indignation and vitriol. With condemnation from the rest of the Catholic AND Islamic world, disdain from his own, highly devout Catholic population, and his excommunication, Callahan had quickly become a massive liability. As a result, in 1481 the Heretic King, as he was called for his announcement and founding of the Cult, was hurriedly "convinced to abdicate the throne" to his oldest son, Peter, lest they face a coup, civil war, or invasion by any number of their less than ecstatic neighbors or their own people. The followers were officially suppressed and later "encouraged" to move out into the colonies. The King himself was placed under house arrest in Belfast, although he disappeared from the lodging he was being kept in in 1489. It is unknown what happened to the former king, but the accepted story is that some of his more devout followers, or perhaps old comrades within the military, snuck in, killed his guards, and extracted him from Eire to parts unknown. Even still, there exist many stories from places like Dublin and Belfast to London, Paris, Berlin, and Constantinople, and even as far out as Tenochtitlan of the Mayaztinca or the southern island of Japan, talking of an unnaturally young looking man resembling the Heretic King using infernal powers to do things such as kidnap children, cause crop failures, and summon great storms. These stories surface even now, despite the man having been born 240 years ago (circa 1666), having certainly died at least a century ago.

Today, the Cult exists only in the few rare insular communities in the New World that descended from the old Cult, although surprisingly, it has also taken root in Rajaput India. How it spread to the subcontinent is unknown, although it is believed it was carried by the Scots or potentially the Timurids.