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M0AI In reply to ZapDynamic [2013-06-07 19:50:54 +0000 UTC]

Thanks!

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M0AI In reply to stablefly [2013-05-25 03:56:05 +0000 UTC]

Thanks, man!

You already have! You may recognize him when you see him again.

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stablefly In reply to M0AI [2013-05-29 04:26:34 +0000 UTC]

Thought he looked familiar

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M0AI In reply to bensen-daniel [2013-05-25 04:09:04 +0000 UTC]

Your comment pleases me to no end, because a Japanese/Haida-esque theme is exactly what I'm going for with this project! Plus a little Ainu and indigenous Siberian. Still figuring out how to properly mix all the ingredients together, visually.

I like your alt-history idea! However, I think you might be pleasantly surprised when you see what this is actually for. Stay tuned!

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bensen-daniel In reply to M0AI [2013-05-25 05:57:43 +0000 UTC]

Interesting mixture of cultures. Now I'm imagining a world where the Bering land bridge never sank, and there's a cultural continuum from Ainu to Chukchi to Yupik to Inuit. Japanese fishermen discovered North America in the first millennium, and harbors along the northwest coast became hideouts for pirates in the 15th century. Other Asian peoples knew of the New World, as evidenced by records of vassalage gifts to the Yuan Emperor in Beijing of bear pelts and walrus ivory from "the Far East beyond the ice mountains." It was not until the Japanese Warring States Period (roughly 1550) that news of the East Coast of North America reached Japan, probably from Portuguese missionaries. Oda Nobunaga, then Shogun, outfitted several expeditions to "the Far East," which brought back fur and gold. Whether Nobunaga's trading outposts broke new ground in America or whether they mixed with the descendants of 15th century pirates is unknown, but there was a thriving community in the Pacific Northwest settlement of Ariyasuka (有靖加　or "the existence of peace increases") to which Nobunaga and his loyalists could flee. Other refugees from the Warring States Period would continue for some time, including ironically the retainers of Nobunaga's successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi, as well as waves of Japanese Buddhists and later Christians (Kiristan). By the time of Isolationism (Sakoku) in the 17th century, Ariyasuka had grown to a settlement of over 100,000 people. Now called Arigoku (有国, the Land that Is, from which the modern English Arica derives), the independent colony retained illicit communication with anti-Shogunate groups in Japan, including the Imperial Court in Kyoto. It was Arican arms shipments and political pressure that broke the Shogunate and began the Yuuji Restoration in 1858. The wave of Japanese emigration that followed spurred another push of Arican expansionism, bringing the American Civil War to an uneasy truce as Northern and Southern English-speakers tried to maintain their western borders. They were only partly successful.
In the closing decades of the 18th century, the American Yassey (from Yasei no Naka the Middle of the Wilderness or the Wild Center) is a land of extremes, the grass steaming at noon, and at night, white with frost. Towns set out patrols with long rifles to guard against the Emishi, the Banjito, the Komanche, the Yanki, but there is no such protection for Bakerosu, the cowboy. Bakerosu must watch the night himself, waiting for the flash of a pistol shot, or a drawn blade, or the rising sun.

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bensen-daniel In reply to bensen-daniel [2013-05-25 06:29:36 +0000 UTC]

I just can't help myself!

Hayauchi Kusawara only wanted to deliver his cows to the Yankijin and drink his salary away, but then a woman fleeing a burning pueblo stumbles into his camp, and dumps a problematic papoose into his lap. Gods and Buddhas know why he agreed to take the woman and her child back to Arica before a man named McCoy catches up to them. Maybe it's honor, although Kusawara didn't think he had any of *that* left.

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Zapan99 In reply to bensen-daniel [2013-05-22 19:06:17 +0000 UTC]

I believe they are Ainu patterns, Ainus are the indigenous people of Japan and the Kurils islands.
[link]

here is a very nice ainu patterns tutorial by Toshino
[link]

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