On September 13th 999, an asteroid impacted the earth, breaking up into several chunks which fell into the Mediterranean sea, Europe and the middle east. Tsunamis washed away many coastal towns and cities, there were firestorms in forests in France and southern germany and the shock-wave of the easternmost impact did considerable damage to Bahgdad. The devastation of said impacts combined with an harsh winter and a cool subsequent year led to chaos. Across both Christendom and the Islamic World there was turmoil and unrest and war. Numerous mad priests and Imams said that this was the End of Days and schisms happened among the Catholic Church, Orthodox Church and Abassid Caliphate, especially after the assassination of the Pope. Splinter groups broke off in both the secular and ecclesiastical spheres, made alliances and fought each other. The next century for Christian Europe and the Islamic World would be one of war and strife that would lead to a decline of both regions. Among the Norse peoples this led to a Polytheistic revival which spread and stuck throughout Scandinavia, Iceland and a new realm that was claimed across the sea: Vinland.





Forced to stick it out by rough seas and several ships being burned by a lightning strike, the initial viking settlers were forced to dig in, fortify their small colony and hold out. In time they came to see their new land as home. A few years latter they sent their last ship back east to inform their kin and kith of their discovery, which led to a migration to the far western island over the next century. Much of the OTL maritime provinces were settled by dozens of small viking enclaves. At first these were little more than fishing villages and some of them died off, were destroyed or failed to thrive, but in time they grew, fought with each other and in 1305 were united under Sitric and Ironhand as the Kingdom of Vinland. This saw a second wave of expansion as Viking armies clad and armed with steel and iron and riding horses on land and ships at sea spread themselves across the eastern seaboard and pushed inland against the peoples of the great lakes and beyond in half a century of warfare and conquest. Women followed the expanding armies (and in a few cases marched along with them to battle) to lay claim to the new territories. The only problem was that while Sitric the Ironhand was a capable warrior he lacked the administrative skill and frameworks to manage the rapidly growing empire and many of those who marched out from Vinland were those that he had defeated and subjugated. When he past on in 1330, his fresh conquests had either broken ties and declared their independence or would do so in the next few years and while the Kingdom of Vinland would endure, dozens of new city states had risen, leading the process of gradual development to start again. The Pope of France launched a crusade to the New World in 1430 which conquered Hispaniola and half of Cuba but got no further while Britain (united under Scottish Rule) would eventually colonize Argentina.







Meanwhile, in a far away land a new power was rising on the divided island of Japan. The old empire in Japan had broken down into a collection of warring clans ruled over by Samurai Daimyo that were sometimes loosely unified by a Shogunate in the name of The Emperor. Some of these clans had found out that piracy offered a good source of income and then that trading voyages with distant parts was both more consistently profitable and safer than piracy. By the 15th century Japanese Traders had made it as far as Madagascar in the west and the Chinese Colonies in Australia to the south. In the 1440s a few explorers set their sights to the North and eventually to the Far East as they past the Bering Straight. There they found lands rich in timber and farmland populated by neolithic peoples with a smattering of iron objects. Eventually several clans decided that a good way to gain power in Japan was to conquer these new lands and sent ships full of Samurai and Ashigaru across to these new lands to the east. At first just a trickle got through, a number which went up when gold was discovered in a some streambeds. Between 1484 and 1630 nearly 205,000 Japanese people arrived in OTL Alaska, BC, Oregon, Washingon and California. Battles were fought between rival clans in this new world over territory, land and gold mines. When a New Shogunate arose on the Home Islands it sent 20,000 Samurai and Ashigaru to the New World to consolidate it's hold on it's new territory and would continue to bring in more people.





Slowly but surely the Japanese pushed eastward following the rising sun. They fought wars with the kingdoms of the Yucatan, which had adopted iron tools and horses and in 1699 in a place that was in another world called Texas they met the Vikings for the first time in battle. Samurai and Ashigaru armed with Katana, Naginata, Yuri, Yumi, War Kama and basic matchlock firearms (Gun development did lag by a couple of centuries) faced the established Viking Kingdom. Although the Vikings were no slouches and had larger more powerful horses the Shogunal Army had numbers and a level of professionalism on their side. In response the King of Texas managed to muster up the support of a dozen other Viking Kingdoms from as far east as Florida and as far North as Tennessee. An army 140,000 strong was assembled and defeated the shogunal army and force their retreat 1702, albeit with heavy casualties. This was the first clash between Samurai and Viking for this new world. It would not be the last.



