The Medieval South [OOC/Sign-Ups]

[Khasinkonia]

A queen or the daughter of a king who won't see a rank? I think the choice is clear for most ambitious nobles.

Depends, it would put them in the line of succession. Also maybe someone wants an alliance with House Boykin? Never know.

Unless you practice a highly bizarre form of succession, they're only in line of the son dies.

[Danceria]

Depends, it would put them in the line of succession. Also maybe someone wants an alliance with House Boykin? Never know.

Unless you practice a highly bizarre form of succession, they're only in line of the son dies.

We follow the rule of Coolius Caeser.

Everything is legal if you have enough legions to back you up.

[Lux Pulchrae]

Unless you practice a highly bizarre form of succession, they're only in line of the son dies.

We follow the rule of Coolius Caeser.

Everything is legal if you have enough legions to back you up.

That's how Rome did it. No one thought they were illegitimate. Also who's succeeding who?

[Danceria]

We follow the rule of Coolius Caeser.

Everything is legal if you have enough legions to back you up.

That's how Rome did it. No one thought they were illegitimate. Also who's succeeding who?

When our illustrious leader has a totally understandable and unforeseen death, the answer is: yes.

[Alaroma]

Depends, it would put them in the line of succession. Also maybe someone wants an alliance with House Boykin? Never know.

Unless you practice a highly bizarre form of succession, they're only in line of the son dies.

Yes, that’s the idea.

[Endem]

It's actually pretty hard to write a backstory for a slave character, as how little would actually happen in their life, I mean, everyday would be a pain, but it would generally be the same as the previous one.

[Vienna Eliot]

It's actually pretty hard to write a backstory for a slave character, as how little would actually happen in their life, I mean, everyday would be a pain, but it would generally be the same as the previous one.

Perhaps they fought in the War, or worked on the Underground Railroad — only to be captured and resold to a new plantation.

[Reverend Norv]

Edward Charles ("Ted" or "Carlos") Gardner - (1835 - present)

Account Name: Norv
Occupation: Lord Commander of the Texas Rangers, Margrave of the Western Frontier.
Motives:

Complex and contradictory, even to himself. Ted Gardner is a man equal parts humane and brutal: the product of the multilingual, multiethnic Southwest, but also the mailed fist of the Confederacy's relentless westward expansion. His motives are best expressed in a paradox: he wants to extend Confederate rule, but only on his own terms. In the desert of the Southwest, where slavery is economically useless, he does not have to hide his distaste for the "peculiar institution"; likewise, he has proven effective in extending the frontier largely through his close relationship with Navajo and Tejano/Neomexicano leaders. He is deeply invested in the idea of bringing law, order, peace, and prosperity to a terribly violent and brutal region; he is far less invested in any events east of the Pecos. Ted's is a pragmatic nation-building project, not an ideological racial-supremacist project.

Background:

Ted Gardner is a member of a unique generation: the first white men to be born and raised entirely as sons of the West. His parents were empresarios from North Carolina, taking advantage of the Mexican government's offer of land to establish a homestead near the headwaters of the Brazos River. He learned Spanish as early as English. To this day, he does not call himself a Confederate, Reb, or Southerner. He calls himself a Texian.

Gardner's early years were traumatic. His father died at the Alamo when he was one year old. When Ted was nine, a Comanche war party burned the family ranch, raped and murdered Ted's mother, and carried him off as a captive. He was a prisoner in Comancheria for three years: learning his captors' language and customs, learning to survive as they did, enduring endless beatings. He acquired both a lifelong, burning hatred for the Comanches' cruelty, and a deep respect for their strength, honor, and stubborn resistance. In later years, he would become one of the few Confederate leaders with whom the great war chiefs were prepared to negotiate as an equal.

When he was thirteen, Gardner was rescued in a raid by the Texas Rangers, and those rough men kept him around: as an apprentice, and then a translator, and then a Ranger in his own right. Ted's reintegration into white society was difficult, and he took refuge in books, making up for much of the formal education that his interrupted childhood had denied him. It was a habit that would remain with him for the rest of his life: in times of trouble, during dark nights of the soul, he would retreat to history and philosophy and remember that there was a whole world of letters that no earthly woes could touch. His private studies left him able to converse largely as an equal with the cultured southern aristocracy - a skill that would prove crucial in the years ahead.

By the time war broke out, Ted was twenty-six years old and the second-in-command of a Ranger company. He had been in love twice, killed six men, read Gibbon's Decline and Fall cover-to-cover three times, and made almost a thousand silver dollars from bounty money and retrieving rustled cattle. He was a child of Comancheria, the Rangers, and the Transpecos. And when Texas forces rode west into the New Mexico Territory, for the sake of politicians two thousand miles away in Richmond, Ted Gardener rode with them.

The campaign changed his life. At the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Ted led his company on foot over cliffs that the Union troops believed impassible, appearing in their rear with repeating rifles. Though the Yankee forces wheeled, Ted and his Rangers hung on while heavily outnumbered for half an hour. At the end of the fight, the Union troops found themselves trapped between the main Texas force and Ted's stubborn bulwark of Rangers. They surrendered, yielding six heavy guns to the Texas forces. That artillery delivered Santa Fe in 1863, and then Denver in 1864. His success - and the battlefield death of many senior Rangers - made Ted Gardener the commander of Texas forces west of the Pecos, a brevet lieutenant-general at the age of twenty-nine. In that capacity, he secured a lasting alliance with the Navajo chiefs against both the Union and the common threat of the Apaches and Comanches. And when the war finally ended, there was a new status quo on the frontier: a kind of controlled anarchy, with the Rangers and their Navajo allies providing a backstop against total chaos. The writ of the Confederacy barely ran, and in its place was a pragmatic accommodation of Texian, Chicano, and Native authorities: negotiated in four languages, and backed with the guns of Ted Gardner's Rangers.

The twelve years since have been violent, but creative. On the frontier, war is a constant: campaigns against the still-powerful Comanche and Apache, brushfire wars along the Rio Grande with Mexican bandits and caudillos, skirmishes with Yankee settlers and militia in the Great Basin. The alliance with the Navajo has held, though the Confederacy refuses to officially acknowledge its considerable debt to an independent native sovereign. The result is a patchwork of Navajo villages and Texian ranches, old Spanish mission towns and Mormon colonies, roving Comanche bands and the Ranger patrols that pursue them. Almost everyone speaks at least three languages; sombreros and ponchos are as common as cowboy hats and dusters. Slavery, in this vast and barren country where cotton and tobacco will not grow, is economically useless; and when a black man crosses the Pecos, there is an unspoken understanding that no questions will be asked about his status. It is a wild, bloody, uncertain country, steeped as much in violence as in creative cultural fusion. But there are no castes, and no shackles. If you survive, you live free.

With the Confederacy's swift decay into a feudal patchwork, Ted Gardner has emerged as the closest thing to the lord of this brutal and beautiful country. His Texas Rangers have become something like a crusading order, gradually extending Confederate authority deeper into the Southwest one raid and border skirmish at a time. They protect settlers from Apache raids, but they also mediate disputes between Mormon communities and Neomexicano ranchers, and defend Catholic and Navajo holy sites with as much commitment as they do Protestant churches. Gardner himself is recognized by Westerners of all colors and creeds as the closest thing to a final authority in the wilderness: the "Law West of the Pecos." His word is the only alternative to settling disputes with a Colt. Gardner is rumored to have a lover in Santa Fe, but otherwise he approaches his duties with an almost monastic intensity. The Rangers rescued him and the West made him, and he has committed himself wholeheartedly to the service of both.

And so Ted has spent nearly every day of the last twelve years in the saddle, riding thousands of miles along the Grand Canyon and through the Sonoran desert and across the Llano Estacado, enforcing some kind of law and order with word and gun. He recognizes no feudal sovereign save the Emperor himself, and while most Confederate aristocrats regard the independence of the Rangers with distaste, they know that Gardner is the lesser of two evils: his Rangers are the only bulwark against total chaos on the frontier, and no other force in the Confederacy is tough and mobile and experienced enough to replace them. Besides: Gardner himself has earned the respect of the great chiefs of the Southwest and Indian Territory in a way that few other white men can claim.

Still, though, every passing year makes it more clear that the society that Ted Gardner leads on the frontier - multilingual and multiracial, poor but egalitarian, violent but free - has little in common either with the feudal South or with the industrial North. And with the Emperor in ill health, many wonder how far the ties that bind the West to Richmond can fray before they finally snap...

Titles/Positions: Lord Commander of the Texas Rangers, Margrave of the Western Frontier, Protector of Santa Fe, Palatine of El Paso, Warden of the Rio Grande, Honored Friend of the Navajo Commonwealth, etc., etc. His most well-known title is also the least official: "The Law West of the Pecos."

Holdings: Very little, in a traditional feudal sense: just a few Ranger stations scattered from the headquarters at El Paso all the way to the Grand Canyon. Unofficially, Gardner is recognized as the closest thing to a final authority in the vast and lawless expanse of the Confederacy's western frontier: roughly everything west of the Pecos River.

Politics: Gardner is fiercely loyal to the West and its people, with all their different languages and cultures. He does not consider his Rangers a civilizing presence, but he does consider them a pacifying one; his goal is to make the frontier a place where you can raise a family without fearing rustling, pillage, and murder. This entails opposing the raids of the Comanches, Apaches, and Mexican bandits; it also entails restraining the greed of Confederate settlers and excluding the oppression of industrial barons and feudal overlords. He is loyal to the Confederacy only to the extent that it represents law and order in a lawless country, and only because it is mostly content to leave him alone. His heart is with the red rock and the endless sky, and the still quiet of the desert.

Faith: Christian, and devout, but little is known beyond this; Ted carries a Protestant Bible wherever he goes, but prays in Catholic churches, and has even participated in Navajo religious rites. Like much else about the man and his frontier home, Ted's faith is syncretic and difficult to pin down.

[Lux Pulchrae]

That's how Rome did it. No one thought they were illegitimate. Also who's succeeding who?

When our illustrious leader has a totally understandable and unforeseen death, the answer is: yes.

I don't think that answers me.

Imagine all this talk and the thread itself doesn't go very far.

[Endem]

Disclaimer: my app will probably be controversial, however, I am not trying to offend anyone, but to tell of the hell that Afro-American slaves underwent in chattel slavery, I do not support slavery in any form, thank you for understanding

Harold Johnson - ( 1833 - N/A )

https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1439,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_1.5/c_limit,w_908/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1492182121/articles/2015/04/24/how-slavery-gave-capitalism-its-start/150423-herschthal-slavery-tease_nnp4oqhe is the one in the middle

Account Name: Endem
Occupation: Slave, well, technically unemployed because he's literally a property of his owner
Motives: Survive through the common hardships of being a slave
Background:
Born in 1833 in what could be described as third-generation slave, he was born on a plantation near Memphis, Tennessee, to one of the so-called Tidewater Aristocrats, he was but one of the hundreds slaves his owner owned, when he became of age enough to work on plantation he was, well, put to work to put it shortly. His father, John, died shortly after Harold reached the age of 14, in 1847, his death, while commonplace in his age and status, impacted the closest to him the most, as John was one of the few that could read, and sometimes when the moon was bright enough, John read to those that would listen parts of an old Bible, how he came to the possession of it, only John knew. His mother was sold away shortly after Harold reached the age of 18, in 1851, thus separating him from any resemblance of family, what happened to his mother next, well, no slave on that plantation could tell, and Harold gave up asking after a few weeks, in his heart, he hoped she didn't suffer much harm.

The civil war went and gone without much change to his life, he was not liberated, Union's troops never marched in and freed them, days just went on, as usual, with him tirelessly working in cotton fields from sunrise to sundown, sleeping on the ground just as other slaves in their small shack, and eating whatever his overseer decided to give them. And so it will probably continue, until Harold dies of some disease, or simply collapses in the field, and feeling not strong enough to get up, be wiped by his overseer until his back resembles little more than a mashed pulp, eventually slipping into oblivion, unless luck shines on Harold, and he gets the rare opportunity to escape, even for a bit, to taste a bit of freedom even if he is to be latter mauled to death by dogs set after escapees.
Titles/Positions: N/A
Holdings: N/A
Politics: N/A
Faith: Christianity

[Sarderia]

Taggity staggity taggity tag. Can I reserve the duke of Houston, city of Galveston, El Paso and the Rio Grande valley?

[Vienna Eliot]

Boykin, Dr. Youngdeer, Gardner, and Johnson are accepted. Expect an IC within a few hours.

Taggity staggity taggity tag. Can I reserve the duke of Houston, city of Galveston, El Paso and the Rio Grande valley?

The Emperor has given his assent.

[Reverend Norv]

Boykin, Dr. Youngdeer, Gardner, and Johnson are accepted. Expect an IC within a few hours.

Taggity staggity taggity tag. Can I reserve the duke of Houston, city of Galveston, El Paso and the Rio Grande valley?

The Emperor has given his assent.

I have already completed an app that claims El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley west of the Pecos. Should I withdraw it?

[Vienna Eliot]

Boykin, Dr. Youngdeer, Gardner, and Johnson are accepted. Expect an IC within a few hours.


The Emperor has given his assent.

I have already completed an app that claims El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley west of the Pecos. Should I withdraw it?

No — my understanding was that the Rangers were something of a peacekeeping force, whereas the character Sarderia is interested in would be nobility. The two could coexist; whether or not they are willing to is another issue.

Regardless, I'll be sure to ask Sarderia to keep in mind Gardner and the Texas Rangers when it comes to determining how much power the character has — he should also remember that the Duke would be subordinate to (though not necessarily submissive to) the King of Texas.

[Reverend Norv]

I have already completed an app that claims El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley west of the Pecos. Should I withdraw it?

No — my understanding was that the Rangers were something of a peacekeeping force, whereas the character Sarderia is interested in would be nobility. The two could coexist; whether or not they are willing to is another issue.

Regardless, I'll be sure to ask Sarderia to keep in mind Gardner and the Texas Rangers when it comes to determining how much power the character has — he should also remember that the Duke would be subordinate to (though not necessarily submissive to) the King of Texas.

My concern is merely that, in my app, I indicated that the area west of the Pecos was sufficiently lawless as to be de facto exclusively under the control of the Rangers - though de jure within the Kingdom of Texas. I have no objection to Houston, Galveston, etc. But the presence of effective nobility in the Transpecos would rather undermine the whole picture of the area that I presented in my application: a haven of anarchic, violent, but nevertheless profound liberty.

[Lux Pulchrae]

Making a second character. Also my character will have some connection to my actual nation, either vague or direct.

[Alaroma]

Iris Madeline Boykin - (1860 - Present)

Account Name:Alaroma
Occupation: Princess of the Kingdom of Texas, if that’s an occupation.
Motives: Well, I suppose I want to help Texas. I want to help my family. I want to be useful. I want to be able to meet my creator, and tell him I left the world a better place.
Background:

Well.........I grew up in an unglued world. I was born before the war, by one year. A year before the Imperialists in the United States tried to crush this Confederation. Oh what a terrible war it was. While my father fought bravely I’m told in Virginia, my first years were spent with my grandparents. Not my mother, no, she had died bringing me into this world. One so filled with darkness when I came.

I remember in Houston, where I was staying at the time, seeing men brought back. I was only a tiny thing, but I remember seeing men missing arms, legs, ears, and parts of their faces when they came home. However I and my brother were blessed when my father came home. I had only had pictures of him. Before he left, as a youth, and stories. But now he was back, and he took on the job of raising be and Israel.

I suppose the next big shock was when my Grandfather became King of Texas. It was like out of a fairytale, and here I was, now a princess. Sure, it didn’t involve any impressive castles, or glass slippers, but it was still a Fantasy in a way come true. If only I had known how lonely our estate outside of Austin would be. No friends there unfortunately. Though before long, they began sending me to Austin for school. Eventually, me, father, and Israel moved directly into the city. While he ran business, me and Israel would go to school and make friends. That lasted until I was 14, and Grandfather died. Then back we went to That damnable estate, pardon my language, I know it’s not lady like. Speaking of lady like, I meet two mother figures there. My tutor, and my maid.

Miss Crawford was to teach me how to be a lady, and other lessons. They were positively boring, and the garden had grown to be positively lovely while we were away. Did I try to make excuses, and run from my lessons? Sure, but she always caught me, and smacked me when she did. Before long, it became more trouble than it was worth. Though I also got the feeling Miss Crawford was actually more charming that I had initially taken her for. She had a genuine interest in me, despite my stubbornness at times. She’d reward me with treats when I did things right, and you couldn’t help but see the spark in her eyes, and prep in her step If you took the time to look.

Then there was Miss Jones, a free woman. Now, I had never been this close to a colored person before. I had seen them around of course. Working fields, running errands, taking care of white children. Slavery. Grandfather despised the practice in private, and so did my father, and I suppose it transferred to me. Yet here this woman was, in my house, willingly. And as I got to know her, the more in love I fell with her. She was an intelligent woman, one who did all sorts of things around the house. From waking me up, the clothes, and her wonderful dinners. But she wasn’t just a maid, she was playful, funny, and an utterly devout woman. And Frankly, I could talk to her. She had no judgement, just listening, and she’d help where she could. Many times she’d point out scripture which was wonderful as well. That’s not all, she had the singing voice of an angel coming from the heavens, and her choir notes did my heart more good than you can imagine.

As I grew older, I saw my father more ingrained in leading the nation. He constructed monuments to Grandfather, the heroes of the Revolution, and the fallen dead of the sons of Texas who died for the Confederacy. I saw schools being built, railways that went to Louisiana laid, and other things. My father told me something interesting once. He said to me “This Kingdom might not be the richest within the Confederacy, but we are one of hope. The poor come to our land, and they ask for a chance. A plot of land, nothing more, and they will remake themselves. My darling, people come here to be reborn.” That rang in my head, even years after he said it. It’s so romantic I think, don’t you? Oh......yeah, I’ve gone on about myself for a while haven’t I?
Titles/Positions: Princess of the Kingdom of Texas, at your service.
Holdings:None I’m afraid.
Politics: I don’t know, there’s just something romantic about a farm, ain’t it? Though that romanticism wanes when you cross the Mississippi. Enslaved blacks, poor whites, working for nothing or next to it. I’m told the North is even worse. I wouldn’t know, besides the stories my father tells me about his time in Yale. Though I have to think there’s something better than what goes on in other Kingdoms. Father says the Industrial Revolution is our salvation. Though I think it’s not just improving people’s lives that drives that, but fear. Fear of the North. Fear of the United States. I’m not sure why, we whipped them didn’t we?
Faith:The Methodist Church

[Alaroma]

No — my understanding was that the Rangers were something of a peacekeeping force, whereas the character Sarderia is interested in would be nobility. The two could coexist; whether or not they are willing to is another issue.

Regardless, I'll be sure to ask Sarderia to keep in mind Gardner and the Texas Rangers when it comes to determining how much power the character has — he should also remember that the Duke would be subordinate to (though not necessarily submissive to) the King of Texas.

My concern is merely that, in my app, I indicated that the area west of the Pecos was sufficiently lawless as to be de facto exclusively under the control of the Rangers - though de jure within the Kingdom of Texas. I have no objection to Houston, Galveston, etc. But the presence of effective nobility in the Transpecos would rather undermine the whole picture of the area that I presented in my application: a haven of anarchic, violent, but nevertheless profound liberty.

There ain’t nothing de Jure about it, the Rangers are an arm of the Texan state. If Austin commands, the Rangers will obey. If it happens that the state enforces it’s will via the Rangers, that’s a different matter. There isn’t however a distinguishing between the two.

[Alaroma]

Taggity staggity taggity tag. Can I reserve the duke of Houston, city of Galveston, El Paso and the Rio Grande valley?

Wait, Im dumb. It should have been Galveston, not Corpus Christi in my reservation. Whoops. Either way, Houston is under my direct holdings, but Galveston is fair game.

[Sarderia]

Taggity staggity taggity tag. Can I reserve the duke of Houston, city of Galveston, El Paso and the Rio Grande valley?

Wait, Im dumb. It should have been Galveston, not Corpus Christi in my reservation. Whoops. Either way, Houston is under my direct holdings, but Galveston is fair game.

Okay then. So, updated reservation please:

Reservation: Harrisburg, Houston; Galveston County, Hudspeth, Brewster, Karnes, Presidio, and Llano Counties, El Paso city and county, San Antonio (Bexar County), Arlington (Tarrant County)

[Sarderia]

I have already completed an app that claims El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley west of the Pecos. Should I withdraw it?

No — my understanding was that the Rangers were something of a peacekeeping force, whereas the character Sarderia is interested in would be nobility. The two could coexist; whether or not they are willing to is another issue.

Regardless, I'll be sure to ask Sarderia to keep in mind Gardner and the Texas Rangers when it comes to determining how much power the character has — he should also remember that the Duke would be subordinate to (though not necessarily submissive to) the King of Texas.

El Paso and the Rio Grande valley were mining towns. I only claim the mines and the small population that maintains it, Texas Rangers can have the rest.

Edit: Small mining towns are often prone to bandits, so it should be sufficiently lawless for the Texas Rangers to estabilish a large presence there. I think the Rangers could act as the military/police force protecting the mining company. You can control the towns and the population while I manage the mining activities.

[Alaroma]

Wait, Im dumb. It should have been Galveston, not Corpus Christi in my reservation. Whoops. Either way, Houston is under my direct holdings, but Galveston is fair game.

Okay then. So, updated reservation please:

Reservation: Harrisburg, Houston; Galveston County, Hudspeth, Brewster, Karnes, Presidio, and Llano Counties, El Paso city and county, San Antonio (Bexar County), Arlington (Tarrant County)

Arlington hasn’t been founded yet, and it’s kinda smack in the middle of Tarant County, a very House Boykin area.

[Sarderia]

Okay then. So, updated reservation please:

Reservation: Harrisburg, Houston; Galveston County, Hudspeth, Brewster, Karnes, Presidio, and Llano Counties, El Paso city and county, San Antonio (Bexar County), Arlington (Tarrant County)

Arlington hasn’t been founded yet, and it’s kinda smack in the middle of Tarant County, a very House Boykin area.

Technically it has been founded, as a train depot, so House Boykin probably wouldn't mind a small logistics depot being bulit inside Tarrant county. But I should drop it if you disagree.

[Alaroma]

Arlington hasn’t been founded yet, and it’s kinda smack in the middle of Tarant County, a very House Boykin area.

Technically it has been founded, as a train depot, so House Boykin probably wouldn't mind a small logistics depot being bulit inside Tarrant county. But I should drop it if you disagree.

Well Boykin owns the railways, Dallas and Boykin being hubs. If you so wish to do something around our railways, I won’t stop you.

Oh, and for a disclaimer, if a resource is ‘strategically important’, Ie Coal, Iron, or helps industrialization, we’re probably involved. House Boykin is implementing an industrial strategy.

[Sarderia]

Elias Harvey West - (1849 - Present)

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Account Name: Sarderia
Occupation: 3rd Viscount Galveston; Majority Shareholder of Harrisburg Railroad Company, West Kerosene and Tar Co.
Motives: Gain power as the ruler of Texas and estabilish a democratic society in his domains.
Background:[list]

Elias Harvey West is the son of Issachar West, a Texas revolutionary soldier turned mining magnate, and Catherine Brewster, daughter of a prominent Arkansas businessman. West Sr. was a citizen of the old Republic of Texas, himself building a huge fortune in arms trade, delivering supplies after supplies of rifles to the Texas revolutionaries, earning the trust and favor of Sam Houston, famous general and President of Texas. After the Texas Revolution, Issachar West transformed his corporation from merely a shipping and trading company into a mineral and energy conglomerate throughout Texas. Due to his fortunes gained by supplying weapons throughout the Revolution, he earned a large amount of wealth and political power among the Texan aristocrats in that time. West used the connections and the wealth to buy vast tracts of land in the Texas coast, around Galveston, Houston, and Texas city, and sponsored the migration of European indentured workers from New York and Pennsylvania to the south.

Indeed, West's activities are one of the factors that enabled Texas to estabilish itself as a prominent regional power, and affirming its independence from Mexico. Sam Houston's regime was very American-friendly; there was basically no distinction between Texas citizens and United States citizens in the decades following the Rrevolution. West capitalized greatly from this. He was loath to use African slaves to work on his ranches, considering the cost and ranching itself doesn't need mass manpower like the Southern plantations did. Instead, West turned to sponsor movement of New Englanders and Europeans to the South. Mass immigrations such as these helped to distinguish Texan society from Mexico as more and more English-speaking immigrants began to move. By 1840, the West family are the owner of majority the land in Galveston and Houston. However, this fortune did not come without a cost.

Frequent raids from Comanche native Americans, Mexican bandits and incursions from the Mexican Army to the contested territory of Nuevo Mexico infuriated Sam Houston's presidency so much that the Texas aristocrats are often forced to donate their wealth and manpower to combat these problems. Issachar West was no exception; he often led parties to fend off Texan outposts along the Rio Grande, with significant losses of his own workers. In return, however, West asked greatly from the Texan administrators; he gained mining concessions of the lands bordering New Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley. When Texas was admitted into the United States in 1845, West's business wasted no time in making use of the lands he had bought from the State of Texas. He bulit mines, towns, and outposts along the Rio Grande and El Paso, bought hundreds of slaves to work in the mines, as well as overseers; immigrants from other parts of the United States, lured by the promise of work, home, and dollars.

It was at this time that West met a wealthy Arkansas planter and businessmen, Saul Brewster. The two got along quite well, and quickly became business partners. West invested in Brewster's plantations and business ventures such as railroads, ranches, and cutting timber in the Ozarks. Vice versa, Brewster financed West's ventures in opening more mines, clearing more land for livestock ranches, and building railroads. The partnership went so far as for them to become family; West married Brester's daughter Catherine on 1846. Unfortunately, their marriage is very cold; due to the fact that Catherine suffered two miscarriages during the first two years of their marriage, which deeply broke her feelings. West was frequently away for business reasons, either to manage his properties or mines, only meeting his wife once or twice a year in

Issachar West is in fact the first owner of railroads in Texas, with the construction of the Harrisburg Railroad from Galveston to San Antonio. In 1847, West purchased from the Harrisburg Town Company the unused land previously allocated to the failed Harrisburg and Brazos Railroad. He financed the construction in a joint partnership with Saul Brewster. The plan was to form a strategic relationship with Galveston, bypassing Houston for freight from the Brazos River valley. Eventually West succeeded in chartering the company 1850, and organizing it on that year. The birth of their only son Elias in 1849, coupled with the finished railroad construction further cemented the mariage of Issachar and Catherine, as it was only a political marriage from the start. The two did not love each other, and only agreed to do their duties because of the contract between West and Brewster families.

When Elias was eleven years old, his father's company was in turnmoil. The news that South Carolina had seceded from the federal Union, followed closely by Texas, Alabama, and Virgina, hurted the exports from texas considerably high, as well as the other states that seceded in 1860. While other states might have an assurance in form of their "King Cotton" policy, ensuring financial and political backing from Europe, Texas was not a major plantation state, and such Texan enterpreneurs must turn to other sources to ensure their economical stability. For Issachar West, this means opening again the trade into Mexico and Spanish Carribean; he instead invited Spanish and Mexican immigrants to replace the halted wave of immigration from New England, and re-routed the sale of livestock, agriculture, and mining products to the south. In 1862, West freed half of all his slaves - one thousand and two hundred men, women, and children - and granted them a place to settle in Texas City, just over the bridge by Galveston. In turn, the freed slaves must join the Confederate Army under himself.

West marched with two hundred men, five cannons and two dozen mounted cavalry into Mississipi, alongside other Texan legions to join General Braxton Bragg in the state. Soon after, Bragg renamed the force as the Army of Tennessee and split the force into two halves; West fought with Confederate commander Leonidas Polk at the Battle of Stones River. In a daring night offensive, he commanded thirty freedmen and sneaked into the Union battery, sabotaging them so that the Confederate Army could seize the ridge of Stones River and win the battle.

Titles/Positions: 3rd Viscount of Galveston, Duke of San Antonio
Holdings: City of Galveston (Galveston, Chambers, and Liberty counties), City of San Antonio (Bexar County), Oil drilling wells in Midland county, Mining sites (not cities or towns) in Hudspeth, Brewster, Karnes, Presidio, Live Oak, Cass, Culbertson, and Llano Counties
Politics: Elias is quite liberal in political views. While he respected and supported the Emperor, and disagreed with the outrightly liberal nature of Union government, he also believes in limited government and free market, which is why he loathed the current regime in Texas as being too restrictive for economic growth.
Faith: Methodist Episcopal Church USA