The Woebetides Revisited

In the early years of the current century I ran a play-by-email campaign set during the Second World War on the fictional Woebetide Islands in the Indian Ocean.  Having recently found my notes of the campaign I thought I'd share some of them here.

A French bomber over the Woebetides

Players’ Briefing – Woebetide History and Geography

History
The Woebetide Islands were first settled by people from Africa (now known as the Woebetideus) in about the 14th Century AD.
  
In the early 16th century Portuguese missionaries arrived and began to convert the natives to Christianity but this process does not seem to have been very advanced when the islands fell under Arab domination.


The islands rules by a series of piratical Arab chieftains, the Walis of Smut until the mid-18th century when they were seized first by the French and then by British.  Control changed hands several times over the next hundred years until, in 1869, a treaty was signed giving the north-eastern part of the islands to France and the south-western part to Britain.

Geography

Grand Woebetide, the main island, has two main towns – Jamestown, the British capital, and Charleville, the French capital.


The population of the towns and coastal villages is largely Arab or Arabised African and Indian.  They fish and grow rice on the flat coastal plains.


The central highlands, where not cleared for plantation, are steep and heavily forested.  The native people practice semi-nomadic slash and burn agriculture and worship the spirits of their ancestors and of the nature around them.


The islands’ climate is hot and humid.  A wet monsoon blows from the south-west between May and October.


The main produce of the islands comes from plantations.  British Woebetide is the Empire’s main producer of mangoes.  Mango chutney has played a vital role in history of the British Raj and its importance to the continued health of the Empire cannot be overestimated.